Merit Network is expanding its network with more...
Merit Network is expanding its network with more than 2,000 miles of fiber across Michigan’ northern Lower Peninsula and the “economically distressed” Upper Peninsula through a Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grant of more than $100 million, said Anthony Wilhelm,…
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NTIA associate administrator of telecom and information applications, in a blog post Friday (http://1.usa.gov/19ysHf9). The grant is enabling Merit to hook up 16 new K-12 institutions and to upgrade six leased circuits to fiber connections, he said. Merit will now have 79 K-12 institutions on its network and 65 will have fiber connections and speeds of up to a gigabit, said Wilhelm. Three schools in the Eastern Upper Peninsula Intermediate School District are getting direct connections to the Merit network, and they share backend technology functions, he said. “By laying the groundwork for a statewide K-12 broadband backbone, Merit lowers the cost of interconnecting intermediate schools districts -- and their wide area networks -- to each other,” he said. “Because Merit does not charge transport fees for traffic that stays on its network, this enables sharing of back-end technology services across multiple intermediate school districts.” The interconnections let districts “aggregate demand” and push down costs, said Wilhelm.