By Carol Stiffler
High-speed internet is coming to the Newberry and McMillan areas.
Highline, a high-speed Internet service provider with operations in Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, and Texas, is running fiber cables throughout Luce County in preparation to offer service here. Highline already supplies internet to homes in the Lakefield, Curtis and Gould City areas, among others.
The business recently purchased the former Newberry Bottling Company building on the north end of Newberry, which will be a warehouse and the Eastern Upper Peninsula hub for Highline.
“We’ve been actively building in and around Newberry,” said Bruce Moore, president of Highline’s midwestern operation. “We’ll build all the way over to DeTour as part of this project.”
While not the first high-speed internet option in the area (Starlink is also popular, and AT&T has laid fiber in select areas), Highline is the most widespread option in the U.P.
Moore said Highline expects to connect about 50,000 U.P. homes.
Laying fiber on rural roads, where Moore said there is an average of just 8 homes per mile, would have been too expensive without federal funding from The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Highline was awarded a $188 million grant to bring high speed internet to rural U.P. homes.
“Because of that lack of density, without your tax dollars and mine, the residents of the U.P. would be forever left behind in terms of having modern internet access,” Moore said. “We understand that Highline has been entrusted with the grant, which is our tax dollars, to actually deliver what the grant proposed to do: build a fiber network to improve the internet access in the very rural parts of the United States. For us, we have the privilege of improving internet access for the folks in the Upper Peninsula.”
Establishing a warehouse in Newberry will also bring new jobs to the Newberry. Moore said Highline will be looking for technicians to help run fiber cables to individual homes and make sure devices in the home are successfully connected.
Each home has a dedicated fiber line used solely by that home; the lines travel together in bundles of 144 fibers inside the thick orange conduit you’ve likely seen in giant spools around the area. Homes connected to Highline will have internet speeds of 1 to 2 gigabytes per second.
For perspective, dial-up internet famously functioned at a slow maximum of 56 kilobytes per second. A rate of one gigabyte per second is about 19,000 times faster than dial-up was, and three times faster than basic cable internet’s 300 megabytes per second.
“We’ve heard from day one that the U.P. has always been way at the back of the bus of anything that’s going to come out,” Moore said. “Sometimes we feel that skepticism. ‘Are you sure? We’ve heard this before, Bruce.’ It gives us great satisfaction to be able to help people out.”
Moore, though exceptionally busy these days, has been on a lot of home installation trips.
“I like to be in the field and see it happen. Not to be too dramatic, but some people are moved to tears,” he said. “I often say: We don’t really sell an Internet connection. What we really deliver is peace of mind and a happy household.”
Highline also intends to offer phone service, wi-fi extenders, and small business service.
On the community side, Highline honors one teacher and first responder per month and looks for local sponsorship opportunities.
“We do some unique things to give back,” Moore said. “We’ll be a great corporate citizen in and around Newberry and the Eastern Upper Peninsula.”
For those who aren’t technologically savvy and struggle with passwords, streaming services, and digital skills, Highline will sometimes offer free in-person training at the Newberry building.
The building Highline now owns formerly housed the Newberry Bottling Company and was sold to Highline by Michael Maki.
Maki was impressed with Highline and will manage the Newberry location.
“Highline is changing lives in the Upper Peninsula with this fiber project. I believe in Highline’s mission so much I’ve decided to join the Highline company. Please join me in welcoming Highline to Newberry,” Maki said in a news release.
