The Michigan Open Access Network (MI-OAN) establishes a new and unique method to promote competition in Michigan’s telecommunication industry. Its website, Mich.com, is designed to create a marketplace for services in areas previously dominated by telecommunication monopolies. It acts as a platform for network and small-edge data centers to enable collaboration and interconnection among network providers.

Members can see fiber maps with hut locations through Mich.com, and they can discover Central Carrier Neutral Points where access and fiber entrances are easily promoted. Accordingly, the website details the marketplace for last mile, middle mile, transport, and lit services. 123NET holds membership and partnerships with MI-OAN, as well as with other telecommunication companies.

MI-OAN Applications include: 

  • Long Haul Dark Fiber: A Michigan municipality that utilizes 123NET’s cost-effective services to support residents. 
  • Central Office Replacement: Interconnected carriers to save on transport costs and increase competition options in new areas. 
  • Edge Computer Data Center: Allow users to extend their services to remote locations. With these huts along the Mi-OAN network, carriers can use these huts to gather, process, and act on data immediately. 
  • Detroit Internet Exchange (DET-IX): This membership is available to all connected providers. 

Benefits of Michigan’s Open Access Network 

Connecting Michigan Network Providers to MI-OAN will establish businesses to have their colocation closer to the Edge. Benefits for the large Tier 1 cities include:   

  • Savings on Transport Costs: Edge computing provides better bandwidth and more power, which offers scalable, agile IT solutions that works within a hybrid or public/private cloud solution to help businesses.  
  • Increasing Options & Competition: Companies that operate as ISPs have become edge providers, and a few edge providers with substantial financial resources have become or intend to become ISPs.  
  • Access to Cloud Providers: Edge computing performs processing close to where the data originates or locally in an edge device. It reduces the bandwidth needed to transmit it to the cloud or the corporate data center.  
  •  Supported Infrastructure: Enhances resiliency by reducing a crucial point of failure, even when communication channels are slow, permanently available, or temporarily down. Information from the edge will make its way back to the data center where connection is available.  

123NET is here to ensure the extension of these benefits across Michigan; consequently, these shelters can add/drop and leverage local access to reach customers that were previously possible. MI-OAN brings these benefits from the large NFL cities to your doorstep to help improve competition and network options for residents and businesses in their communities, lower costs, improve resiliency of network, and leverage to better interconnect buildings.  

For more information about MI-OAN, visit Mich.com.