MCNC: Broadband key infrastructure for future

In a broadband connectivity briefing at AdvantageWest, Joe Freddoso with MCNC told local supervision leaders and professionals that a middle mile network acts as a bridge that takes you from a Internet to a local broadband network. AdvantageWest is a nonprofit, public-private partnership responsible for promoting economic development in a 23 western-most counties of North Carolina, including Henderson County.MCNC is an independent nonprofit that provides technical infrastructure to educate, innovate and enhance economic development throughout North Carolina. It operates a high speed optical backbone for schools, community colleges, libraries, and nonprofit hospitals across a state.MCNC received $144 million in federal stimulus funds (Federal Recovery and Reinvestment Act) including $40 million in private matching funds, Freddoso said.Basically, we're building something that's unprecedented in North Carolina for its breadth and scope, he said. Local and state supervision can participate in a utilization of middle mile fiber broadband network expansion, Freddoso added. It can be thought of as a utility just like water, sewer and electricity when communities go looking to attract business.A fiber optic network incentive where a company doesn't have to come in and build their own is a huge draw, Freddoso said. We've got to start thinking about this infrastructure in a different way. Nobody else is doing this with a comprehensiveness that North Carolina is.A better bargain of a term middle mile is to think of it as an interstate in which a middle mile is a backbone and a last mile is a road to your house, said Scott Hamilton with AdvantageWest. Middle mile broadband connectivity will make a Internet faster and give it more capacity so incomparable amounts of data can be transmitted. That will provide opportunities for businesses, hospitals and educational entities to be able to connect onto a network and be more globally competitive, he said. For example, a hospital such as Park Ridge or Pardee could! be in t ouch with a surgeon in another part of a world about a health care issue through a increased broadband capacity, he said.It's very good for education, very good for health care and very good for economic development, Hamilton said. This is as important as having good road infrastructure and water and sewer. It's like adding lanes on an interstate. It's a significant advancement, like going from dial-up to DSL, but it's even greater than that.