Mayor Christopher Taylor
- On Ann Arbor
“Affordable and reliable broadband access is an important part of the fabric that supports successful, innovative and equitable communities.”
- On Next Century Cities
“Ann Arbor has a long history of innovation and supporting best practices. In an environment where government is asked to do more with less, collaborating with our residents, businesses and other stakeholders is an important part in preparing for the needs of the future.”
- What Ann Arbor is working on
In 2017 the City of Ann Arbor constructed a 35-mile community institutional fiber network (A2 I-NET) to replace a Comcast fiber network. All 35 city locations as well as the Ann Arbor District Libraries, Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, and the Downtown Development Authority are currently connected and utilizing the fiber. The A2 I-NET was physically designed utilizing a ring/bi-sector topology to accommodate for redundancy, failover, and resiliency. Additional fiber capacity was built in to the A2 I-NET and dark fiber is available for community use.
The goal is to densify the conduit and fiber infrastructure in the City’s Tech Park to allow for replacement of legacy infrastructure, Smart City initiatives, structure-to-structure communications, economic development, innovation, partnerships and collaboration, enhanced city services, and improve quality of life in an equitable and sustainable fashion.
The city’s broadband infrastructure supports one of the most advanced autonomous vehicle and connected vehicle testing environments developed by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and is partnering with Ford Motor Company on a mobility data platform and living lab for city mobility data.
