2608I2215

Project Purpose

The Moon-Light Project combines middle mile fiber broadband expansion with the engagement of last mile broadband providers in the state of Michigan. In the 74 counties where Merit/Moon-Light would have a presence, Moon-Light would enable a total of 103 access points with almost 70,000 census blocks and over 120,000 unserved locations.

Merit has secured letters of intent from three last-mile service providers which have been provided. Moon-Light will enable broadband service in their territories to at least 16,499 unserved households. Merit identified only those households indicated by FCC 477 data, which are by definition fully unserved within per provider counts.

Activities

The project intends to expand the optical capabilities of Merit's existing 2,200-mile physical fiber network. Moon-Light would future-proof this established foundation to expand the optical capabilities of Merit's existing fiber network by adjusting the sizing and capacity of the optical network. This would reduce power and collocation requirements and replace aging multi-slot terminal technologies with modern data center interconnect technologies capable of supporting both new and existing services from 10 Gbps to 800 Gbps capacities either natively or through aggregation onto the coherent core architecture.

The proposed Moon-Light architecture will consist of ROADMs offering alternate add/drop approaches and optical amplifiers of different types optimized for specific network requirements. In this project, Moon-Light will drastically expand access to last-mile providers seeking to deliver service to unserved communities.

Outcomes

Merit's existing fiber infrastructure currently runs through all counties in MI except 9. In the 74 counties where Merit/Moon-Light would have a presence, Moon-Light would enable a total of 103 access points with almost 70,000 census blocks and over 120,000 unserved locations. Merit has secured letters of intent from three last-mile service providers. Moon-Light will enable broadband service in their territories to at least 16,499 unserved households. Upon completion, Moon-Light could be leveraged by last-mile providers to serve thousands of unserved locations in Michigan, at least 2,305 of these being unserved rural households. Moon-Light's enablement of accessible, affordable transport services will enhance the viability of last-mile deployment projects not only at the 100/20 performance level but also at much higher performance levels and will scale easily along with the high-capacity demand of gigabit-tier last mile networks, such as FTTP (Fiber-to-the-Premise), and therefore will tend to support or solidify plans for expanded or new last-mile networks with that performance level.

Beneficiaries

This is a statewide project designed to serve 16,499 currently unserved households across Michigan. The project will also enable all of Merit's existing community members, public sector, nonprofit and private organizations, governmental agencies, educational institutions, and regional broadband service providers with expanded and economical access to Layer 3 commodity internet services, peering opportunities, and cloud service provider access by leveraging new dark wavelength transport services. Merit's existing accessible, affordable middle mile network lacks the connection and traffic capacity to serve expanded or new last-mile networks. Moon-Light will solve this problem and allow Merit to make its open-access network broadly available in support of currently planned and future last-mile networks in now-unserved rural areas, such as the Upper Peninsula and Crawford County.

Subrecipient Activities

Merit Network, Inc. is a subrecipient of federal funds for this project. Merit's scope of work includes network planning and implementation, third-party contractor management sourcing, federal compliance, enabling middle-mile open access, engagement, and assisting with reporting and audit requirements.

Michigan State University

11.031 - Broadband Infrastructure Program

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) [DOC]

East Lansing, Michigan 48824-2600 United States

Single Zip Code

None

COVID-19 $10,500,000 (100%) percent of this Project Grant was funded by COVID-19 emergency acts including the CARES Act.
Amendment Since initial award the End Date has been extended from 05/31/23 to 05/31/24.