Behind Microsoft's Airband Initiative as it partners with small ISPs, like Michigan's PackerLand, to deliver internet to rural homes using existing TV towers
“You see that hill over there beyond the tree line? That's Canada." — Pointing northwest, Steve Mason leads me and Cory Heigl … Tweets: @mcwm , @mcwm , @carlfranzen , and @taylorlorenz . Thanks: @mcwm Tweets: Mike Murphy / @mcwm : PackerLand, a small ISP in upper Michigan—working with @Microsoft, through its Airband Iniative—just started delivering the internet to rural homes using existing TV towers, and it works really quite well ! https://qz.com/1467036 pic.twitter.com/SQ11it9ULB Mike Murphy / @mcwm : Reliable internet access, in 2018, is generally only available in places ISPs think they can make money laying cables and putting up new towers. What if we didn't have to do that to service the world? https://qz.com/... Carl Franzen / @carlfranzen : 30% of the curriculum for the state of Michigan is now online... yet in this Upper Peninsula district, 38% of the kids don't have home broadband internet http://bit.ly/2Kn7AS7 via @mcwm Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : “If we were restarting the internet today, how could we connect anyone?” @mcwm on an innovation that could bring internet to millions of people in the US http://qz.com/... Thanks: @mcwm
Context & Ripple Effects
This story is the field-level proof point of a program Microsoft launched in mid-2017, when it unveiled its $10B Rural Airband Initiative promising better broadband for 23.4M Americans by seeding money to local ISPs across 12 states. PackerLand, a tiny upper-Michigan ISP, is what that seed money looks like on the ground: fixed wireless beamed from TV towers that already exist, no new construction required.
The timing matters — days after this piece ran, Microsoft announced it would scale the program to 25 states by end of 2019 with a target of 3M customers by mid-2022, and later took it global to Latin America and Africa. PackerLand is the template case that made those expansions sellable.
First-order effects
- Rural homes around PackerLand's Michigan coverage area get reliable internet now, served over existing TV towers rather than waiting for fiber or cable builds that carriers have declined to make.
- PackerLand gains Microsoft's capital and imprimatur, letting a small ISP compete where the economics of standalone rural service normally fail.
Second-order effects
- Other small ISPs become replicable partners rather than acquisition targets — Microsoft's seed-money model scales by franchising the PackerLand approach across states, pressuring incumbent carriers whose rural buildout case rested on high per-home costs.
- Reusing broadcast towers turns idle TV infrastructure into a revenue-bearing asset, giving tower owners and broadcasters a new customer class in connectivity.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US rural broadband consolidates into a federated structure — hyperscaler money flowing through hundreds of local ISPs — while Microsoft's own research arm keeps defining the problem, as when it found roughly 120M Americans lacking high-speed access in its 2021 digital-divide study.
- That dual role of funder and scorekeeper positions Microsoft to shape how regulators and states measure and subsidize the gap, an influence that grows with each state added.
The trend: Rural broadband delivery is shifting from carrier-owned buildouts to platform-funded federations of small ISPs reusing existing infrastructure, with Microsoft's Airband as the leading template.