EAGLE-Net on Track to Finish Middle Mile Project in December 2014, Project Executives Say
EAGLE-Net will be able to complete its middle mile network by December 2014, said project representatives at Colorado Legislative Audit Committee hearing Wednesday. Through August, 2,938 miles of broadband network infrastructure were completed and 105 community anchor institutions were connected through EAGLE-Net. Mike Ryan, the project’s CEO, said the company was able in April to solve its disputes with NTIA over modifications to its routes, and the project is on track to connect schools across the state. EAGLE-Net said it will complete the project using the remaining $8.4 million of its NTIA grant and $8 million from a new network provider.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
As a condition of the $100.6 million grant from NTIA, EAGLE-Net was required to build its middle network to school districts statewide that wanted intranet fiber networks, said Ryan. When the project is completed, 86 percent of school districts will be covered by EAGLE-Net’s service, and more will be connected from EAGLE-Net’s revenue base in the future, he said. “Ten school districts in Colorado are not served by EAGLE-Net because the federal government is already serving them through other projects,” said Ken Fellman, the project’s general counsel. “When the grant expires, parts of the state will not be connected to the extent that other school districts build networks, but that will change over time.” The school intranet connections will provide a valuable service because they will not commingle with commercial traffic, said Chip White, EAGLE-Net vice president. “We are connecting schools to the national backbone of the Internet at tier 1 and tier 2 connections, where they will be able to get access to services at research universities that they would not typically have access to,” said White.
EAGLE-Net is in negotiations with a network operator, said Ryan. The operator, which would provide a initial capital investment of at least $8 million to complete the network, would operate the network consistent with EAGLE-Net’s mission to deliver broadband to schools, manage the network on a day-to-day basis and ensure long-term sustainability for EAGLE-Net, said Ryan. EAGLE-Net hopes to finish negotiations with the provider by mid-October, but it won’t announce its name before the contract is settled, he said.
As a middle-mile network, EAGLE-Net is collaborating with 12 service providers to provide open network access to residents across the state, and the project spent more than $22.4 million to secure long-term lease agreements, said Fellman. “Our collaborators have lots of benefits when they use our network, but they do need to comply with federal regulations in our negotiations,” said Fellman. Not all providers can get access to EAGLE-Net services, said Ryan. “We can only pick one opportunity for a service provider in each area, and we try to work with both telecos and incumbents,” said Ryan.
Colorado lawmakers questioned EAGLE-Net representatives on the network buildout to a supercomputer in Wyoming. “It provides our network with power,” said Fellman. The supercomputer used to be in Boulder, but it was taking up too much power on the electric grid, said White. “The supercomputer is part of a National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration project and it was part of our original grant application,” said Fellman.