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Microsoft Grants More than $70K for Washington County Net Access

An small internet service provider in Washington County has been awarded almost $73,000 from the Microsoft Corporation. The money will be used to help provide affordable wireless internet to up to forty rural customers who, to this point, have been beyond internet reach. Mark Ouellette is president and COO of grant recipient Axiom Technolgies, based in Machias. He says his company will employ so-called TV white space, frequencies previously used to provide analog TV signals.

“We’re considering a number of different areas where people were unserved, would be able to get service with the technology and I’m guessing that we’ll make a determination within the next two or three weeks about where we’re going to start to put up the equipment and start to offer the service,” he says.

In addition to internet service, Ouellette says customers will receive cloud-based Microsoft educational tools for the next year. Axiom was one of only a dozen entrepreneurial businesses, worldwide, to receive one of these “Affordable Access Initiative” grants and the only one in North America.

Ed is a Maine native who spent his early childhood in Livermore Falls before moving to Farmington. He graduated from Mount Blue High School in 1970 before going to the University of Maine at Orono where he received his BA in speech in 1974 with a broadcast concentration. It was during that time that he first became involved with public broadcasting. He served as an intern for what was then called MPBN TV and also did volunteer work for MPBN Radio.