An American created a rural Internet provider and received $ 2.6 million

In 2002, Moh moved to Sayo Township, a rural area in Michigan, when his employer provided

future entrepreneur excellent homeinternet connection: many of his neighbors at the time were still suffering from slow dial-up access. After a while, however, the bandwidth of the network could no longer keep up with the technical capacity of Mouch, as well as the needs of his growing family.

But when he began to look at alternatives,The options didn't suit him. Internet speed from AT&T was painfully slow. Comcast wanted to charge him a $50,000 advance to expand services to his home. Then Moh chose the third way.

Instead of shelling out that kind of money just to be dependent on the whims of an ISP, the 46-year-old decided to start his own fiber optic ISP.

"I had every reason to believe that I couldfulfill many of the requirements, and then also offer their services to the local community, and do it better than the big companies, he told NPR. “I saw this as a great opportunity both to expand services and to pursue what I am passionate about.”

Jared Moh. Photo: NRP

He created the company in 2017 and in 2019received permission to start construction. In August 2020, he was officially in business. Just in time for his kids to go to virtual school during the pandemic.

“It was great,” he recalled. “I had a home fiber that I was in control of and the ability to control my future destiny.”

Along the way, he also connected his neighbors to hishigh speed fiber optic lines. His business has grown and today serves 71 clients with reliable internet. With the help of contractors, he has already laid more than 22 km of cable throughout the county. Sometimes it takes almost a kilometer of cable to connect one house in the countryside.

Now Moh gets $2.6 million from the federalbudget to continue its work. It was one of four ISPs that received federal money to expand fiber internet services in the county due to the pandemic. With this money, Mauch plans to connect another 600 houses to the network. This will require laying another 61 km of cable.

Scharrer hopes to have his entire county served by high-speed broadband by the end of 2024.

According to BroadbandNow, about 42 million Americans do not have broadband access.

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