New grant focuses on Internet 'ring'

The N.C. Rural Internet Access Authority last week awarded New River Community Partners and the Blue Ridge Business Development Center (BDC) a $600,000 grant to improve Internet access and reliability in the northwest region.

A Dec. 16 release from the RIAA listed counties affected by the "Northwest Connection" project as Alleghany, Ashe, Caldwell, McDowell, Watauga and Wilkes.

The grant was one of seven awards announced by the authority that day totaling $3 million for projects in western North Carolina.

Combined with grants previously announced in July and November, the RIAA has awarded $10 million so far for connectivity projects as part of its "e-communities" initiative. The RIAA's goal is to have broadband (high-speed) Internet access available to all North Carolina residents, particularly those in rural areas, by the end of 2003.

According to the release, an additional $3 million of investment will be leveraged for the project by NRCP and the other participants, which include Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation, DukeNet Communications and Skyline Telephone.

Ring of Fiber

George Matuck, the BDC's community technology manager, will be the project manager.

He said most of the funding for Northwest Connection will go to lay fiber to create a "ring," a closed circle of Internet connection.

That will provide "redundancy" which protects against outages. If a cut occurs in the line, Matuck explained, communication can go in the other direction.

That differs from a "spur," or a single fiber run, he said, in which a break cuts off the flow of communication "It's not like electricity, where it breaks the circuit....

"Skyline has a ring up here (in Alleghany County), but the whole northwest region doesn't have a ring," said Matuck.

He said the project will probably begin early next year, once the group receives the ground rules from the RIAA. Some details are still to be worked out.

"It's going to be a big project; it's going to be an exciting project," said Chris Robinson, Alleghany's "e-champion" — that is, the local leader in the e-communities effort. Robinson is also director of the Alleghany and Ashe campuses of Wilkes Community College.

Business/Personal Benefits

By "ringing" the region, said Robinson, "It makes your uptime go from 80 to the 99.9 percent that people demand in the kind of businesses we're trying to recruit."

Matuck elaborated on that point. About a year ago, Alleghany County officials were courting National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association (NRECA) as a tenant to operate a customer-service call center at the BDC's future permanent site. That company ended up deciding to expand at its existing facilities rather than branching out to such a satellite location.

NRECA had asked for that 99.9 percent reliability for connections, Matuck said, but the BDC could not guarantee that.

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