NCREN could have significant impact on Anson County
POLKTON – Right now, the only physical signs of what’s coming are four orange-ribboned stakes behind the chapel on South Piedmont Community College’s L.L. Polk Campus and the daily sightings of crews burying cable along U.S. 74. The impact on SPCC and Anson County, however, could be significant.

The cable that’s being buried along U.S. 74 is fiber-optic cable that will extend from Charlotte to Wilmington as the South Central corridor for the North Carolina Research and Education Network, or NCREN. SPCC has granted an easement to MCNC (nonprofit Microelectronics Center of North Carolina, which operates NCREN) to have a hut placed on campus to serve as the hub for the network in Anson County.

According to www.mcnc.org, NCREN “connects teachers, students and partners to collaborate, discover, create, share and apply knowledge. The fiber-optic infrastructure provides Internet, video, audio, data and computing network services to all 16 of North Carolina’s public institutions that grant baccalaureate degrees, as well as the N.C. School of Science and Math … . In addition, constituents include Duke University, Wake Forest University and most of the state’s private universities and colleges, state government, regional community networking initiatives such as WinstonNet and ERC Broadband, and many of the state’s medical and research institutions. NCREN also provides access to national and international research networks, including Internet2 and the National LambdaRail, enabling global research and collaboration.”

For SPCC, it will also mean faster Internet service on the L.L. Polk Campus. “Right now, we have 100 megabytes worth of bandwidth to the street,” Vice President of Information Services Ernest Simons said. “That will grow to 100 gigabytes (102,400 megabytes) out to the street.”

Also right now, all transactions on the Internet from the L.L. Polk Campus or Lockhart-Taylor Center travel through a server on the Old Charlotte Highway Campus in Monroe. This network will eliminate the need for that setup, which alone will save the college $4,000 to $8,000 a month, Vice President of Finance and Administrative Services John DeVitto said.

“It’s going to make it faster to do things here,” DeVitto said. “Once it’s up and running, you’re not going to see (the Internet) be slow anymore. It fits in with the infrastructure we’re doing with Wi-Fi hot spots and such. We have added a lot more hot spots around campus – all three locations – and once we get the system hooked up, it will be even faster using the Wi-Fi. Any way we want to get out, whether it’s through desktop or laptop or you want to get out through your iPad or whatever, it gives us a lot more ways to move data. And transmissions will be much faster.”

When MCNC was applying for federal grants, it approached the N.C. Community College System to see if anyone was interested in hosting, DeVitto said. SPCC was among the first to get its application in. “Part of their grant process was to show they were getting all these easements as matching funds,” Simons said. “It won’t cost us anything. This access is what we get in return for the easement.”

The hut that will go behind the chapel will be a prefabricated concrete structure measuring 20 feet by 40 feet. MCNC employees will be the only ones who have access to it, DeVitto said.

The hut will serve as a hub for MCNC service for Anson County residents who want to hook into the network. This is part of MCNC’s mission to bring high-speed Internet service to underserved rural areas throughout the state.

“The big boys will not bring real high-speed connections into a community where they cannot make a profit,” Simons said. “They’re trying to close this technology divide out in the rural areas. With the increase we’ve had in online courses over the last few years, students cannot take advantage of what we offer online because in rural communities they don’t have access to the Internet. That’s why we went to a satellite connection on the Career Cruiser, because we could not rely on Internet access out in the county.”

Neither DeVitto nor Simons is sure when the hut will arrive or when the college will be online on the network. An interactive map on the MCNC website predicts a completion date of the 182.8-mile South Central corridor sometime from April to July 2012.

Originally, crews contracted by MCNC started in the mountains and in Wilmington and started working toward the middle of the state. Since then, more crews have been hired and are working some of the middle sections, DeVitto said. The work is being funded by economic stimulus money from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BIOP), part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009.

“You won’t see much until it really gets operational,” DeVitto said. “Once it gets operational, you’re going to see a faster, speedy delivery on your data and especially Internet transmissions.”

For more information about MCNC and NCREN, visit www.mcnc.org.

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Media inquiries: Rosemary Britt, 704-272-5342, rbritt@spcc.edu