The Eastern Upper Peninsula Intermediate School District board will spend $18,000 to enhance wireless Internet service at St. Ignace and Rudyard schools and plans to reduce the cost to use the system by more than $1,600 monthly by switching to a local provider. The decision was made during the board's Wednesday, July 12, meeting and the improvements at St. Ignace Area Schools were completed Monday, July 31.

Service for St. Ignace and Rudyard schools will be enhanced, while service to Mackinac Island Public School will be re-routed.

The change will improve Internet access and cost less, said Mike Porter, director of technology

for the ISD. The service is used for distance learning and Internet classrooms. St. Ignace and Mackinac Island now will share a connection.

The increased capacity needed by St. Ignace, including the Mackinac Island use, would cost more than $2,600 a month with the ISD's current supplier, AT&T. With a new partnership with Lighthouse.Net, a regional Internet service provider, the costs would drop to approximately $1,000 monthly.

Mr. Porter has been working with AT&T to get the company to add equipment to increase service, but without the customer basis to help recoup costs, the company has not been willing to spend the money, he said.

"Since we can't buy it from them, we're building it ourselves," said Mr. Porter.

The ISD budgets $150,000 annually to cover the costs of the Internet service for the entire district, which covers approximately 4,000 square miles.

The wireless connection comes from the St. Ignace water tower, which will connect to the Rockview Hill tower that is north of Cedarville. From there the signal travels to the water tower near the ISD office in Sault Ste. Marie.

Rudyard schools are scheduled to be connected to the service within a month.