The Van Buren District Library says it’s closing the digital divide in Southwest Michigan with a mobile hotspot lending program.
Library Director Dan Hutchins tells us in 2022, the library used a grant to acquire 210 mobile hotspots from Mobile Beacon, a non-profit provider of broadband internet. It uses the T Mobile network to make it possible for anyone to get high-speed internet, even in remote rural areas.
“I t took about three or four months for the news to spread that the library was offering this service, b ut once word got out there, we just found we couldn’t keep them on the shelves,” Hutchins said.
The library later doubled its number of hotspots, and Hutchins says they were used to access more than 312,00