Future Phase

What does your future hold?

Truestream, of course!

If you’ve checked out our map, you will see that we cover a big chunk of the western lower peninsula of Michigan. In fact, we cover rural parts of 26 counties in Michigan – parts of almost 1/3 of the counties in the state. Our goal remains the same as day one: to connect our unserved and underserved GLE members. Covering such a large area will take time, and we are currently 62% of the way through our fiber infrastructure build.

We have visited every meter location to inspect the GLE-owned equipment and gather the data necessary to proceed to the next step: construction. While we have gathered the basic information we need, including cost estimates and the constructibility of an area, we lack the ability to predict the future.

The past five years have thrown us a few curve balls. Queue a global pandemic. Inflation. Unexpected competition. Five years ago, if we had announced timelines for our entire service area, we’re confident it would no longer be accurate. We’re glad we didn’t make any promises we couldn’t keep. 

If you make the customer a promise…make sure you deliver it. – Merv Griffin

Installing a fiber infrastructure was born out of a necessity for Great Lakes Energy – improving communications, reliability and the ability to use more advanced equipment for our electrical infrastructure. Bringing the fiber service to the home – that’s a bonus. That means that during the Future Phase, you may see our fiber lines running right in front of your house, but you’re unable to connect yet. That is our mainline fiber, which connects our electric substations.

We expect the Truestream network build to be completed in late 2029 or early 2030. While we cannot accurately provide the exact construction timeline for each service area for Truestream, we do our best to announce a year at a time worth of construction on our NEWS page. 

We’re in this together, and we appreciate your patience and encouragement along the way!