Oakland County has fixed broadband cables running past 99.6% of its homes and mobile coverage reaching essentially everyone, yet nearly 24,000 households across the county still have no internet subscription at all. The gap has little to do with missing wires and everything to do with what comes after the cable reaches the curb: whether a family can afford to plug in, own a working computer, or knows how to use either one.
State officials point to cost, not infrastructure, as the real obstacle. “Infrastructure may be lacking in pockets of Oakland County,” said Eric Frederick, Michigan's first chief connectivity officer, who leads the Michigan High-Speed Internet Office established in 2021, as reported by The Oakland Press. Frederick reported that about 30,000 Oakland County households lack an internet subscription based on the latest data, a figure that tracks closely with 2024 Census estimates showing 23,597 households in the county with no subscription and 13,520 with no computer at all. Those households, out of the county's roughly 524,981 total, face what officials describe as overlapping barriers of affordability, digital literacy, device access and technical support.
Why Cable in the Ground Isn't Enough
The disconnect between coverage and adoption shows up starkly in survey data cited in the same report. Among Michigan respondents living in households where internet service is actually available, 69% identified cost as a substantial barrier to getting connected, while 65% pointed to availability concerns even in covered areas, according to the 2024 Michigan survey figures. Frederick has said the state's goal must extend beyond simply running cable — residents also need to be able to afford and effectively use the broadband once it arrives.
Statewide, more than 906,728 Michigan households lack a home internet connection entirely, according to 2024 American Community Survey estimates, with 536,861 of those relying exclusively on cellular service instead. Michigan ranks 16th nationally in homes without internet, and its 906,728 disconnected households represent 22.2% of the state, compared with 20.3% nationally, where 26,296,558 households have no home internet connection. An additional 865,000 Michigan households face affordability, adoption or digital literacy barriers separate from availability, and the state has said affordability remains the leading reason people do not adopt internet service that is already available to them.
The Subsidy That Disappeared
Much of the current squeeze traces back to a federal program that no longer exists. The Affordable Connectivity Program once provided eligible households at least a $30 monthly internet subsidy, but it ended after funding ran out, according to the Federal Communications Commission, which confirms Congress chose not to appropriate additional money to keep the benefits flowing past May 2024. More than 278,000 Michigan households had received those benefits before the program lapsed, and Bridge Michigan reporting distributed by CBS News found the average monthly home internet bill in the state has since climbed to $65.
The impact on smaller providers was immediate. Jeremy Sheets, president of Mt. Pleasant-based CMS Internet, said the company had about 400 subscribers using the Affordable Connectivity Program at its peak, out of roughly 12,000 subscribers overall, per the same Oakland Press account. CMS Internet charges $59.95 a month for 300 megabit fiber service — a price that becomes far harder to justify for lower-income households once the federal discount disappears.
What Disconnection Costs Students
The subtitle of the Oakland Press piece frames the impact on students as significant, and a 2020 Michigan State University Quello Center report examining the relationship between home internet access and educational outcomes backs that up with numbers. The report found that among students in grades eight through 11, 82% sometimes or often received homework requiring internet access, yet nearly two-thirds of students without home internet said they often or sometimes left homework unfinished because they lacked internet access or a computer.
The gap widens depending on what kind of connection, if any, a student has. Just 17% of students with high-speed home internet reported leaving homework unfinished, compared with 39% of those with slow home internet and 49% of those relying on cellphones. Students without home internet also spent 30 additional minutes per night on homework compared with connected peers, the Quello Center found.
Access shaped more than just homework completion. Students with fast home internet reported an average GPA of 3.18, compared with 2.81 for those with no home internet access and 2.75 for those relying only on cellphones. High-speed students were also far more likely to collaborate digitally on schoolwork — 83% reported messaging classmates for coursework help, 66% video chatted with classmates about assignments, and 54% emailed teachers — activities that are harder to sustain on a phone-only connection. Those disparities extended into students' post-graduation plans: 65% of students with fast home internet planned to complete a postsecondary program, compared with 60% of those with slower connections and just 47% of students with no home internet or cellphone-only access.
State and Federal Money Aims at the Gap
Michigan is now pushing hundreds of millions of dollars toward closing what's left of the physical gap. In August 2026, the Michigan High-Speed Internet Office signed subgrant contracts with 17 internet service providers under the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, committing $916.6 million in federal funds and $557.7 million in private matching funds to connect nearly 198,000 unserved and underserved locations statewide, according to Telecompetitor. Those contracts came only after the National Telecommunications and Information Administration issued a “Benefit of the Bargain” policy notice in June 2025 that dropped BEAD's strict fiber preference in favor of technology-neutral, lower-cost bids, forcing Michigan to reopen its subgrant application process to let satellite and fixed wireless providers compete against fiber applicants.
A separate state effort, the Realizing Opportunity with Broadband Infrastructure Networks program known as ROBIN, has already deployed $238 million from the federal Capital Projects Fund to finance symmetrical fiber connections for more than 82,000 unserved homes and businesses, with construction scheduled through late 2026, according to Berrien County officials. On the literacy and adoption side, the state's Michigan Inclusive Training, Technology, and Equity Network, or MITTEN, awarded $10.6 million to 13 regional organizations in December 2025 to establish digital navigator hubs that help residents acquire devices, enroll in low-cost plans and build tech skills.
In Southeastern Michigan, Connect 313 has been running its own version of that work since 2020, operating 22 neighborhood technology hubs across the Detroit metropolitan area that distribute devices and telehealth tools to underserved residents. Michigan's own Digital Equity Plan estimated in 2023 that roughly 730,000 households statewide face these kinds of non-infrastructure barriers — affordability, device access and digital literacy — rather than a lack of available service. For Oakland County, where the cables already reach almost every address, that distinction is the whole story: the wires are there, but for tens of thousands of households, getting online still isn't that simple.
