Timeline
July 20, 2000 – Erv Blythe introduces the e-58 concept to Danville and Pittsylvania County, Virginia audience of elected and appointed officials at Averett College.
2000 – eCorridors conducted a Danville Economic Base Study. This served as the foundation on which a comprehensive strategy for enhancing the competitiveness of Danville via broadband network infrastructure was eventually developed and executed.
August 2000 – Danville (eDan) announcement.
August 23, 2000 – eCorridors (Erv Blythe) e-58 meeting with Neil Noyes – Federal Economic Development Representative for Economic Development Administration.
September 2000 - Original e-58 idea proposition development: Virginia Tech proposes to facilitate development of advanced, fiber optic infrastructure stretching across the rural, southern part of Virginia stretching from the east coast to the western border along U.S. route 58. Project title, e58 Free Trade Corridor.
September 25, 2000 – VT, Averett College, Dan River Community College partner with the Dan River Region to develop eDan – announcement made at Averett College.
October 2000 - eCorridors in cooperation with regional public and private sector entities, and local internet service providers, proposes the development of a next generation, high-bandwidth network infrastructure to serve the City of Danville and Pittsylvania County. Included in the proposal is the establishment of a distributed Multimedia Services Access Point (MSAP) serving Danville and Pittsylvania County with high bandwidth advanced communications and commodity internet connectivity.
April 2001 – Economic Base Study and Infrastructure Assessment Model delivered to the Future of the Piedmont Foundation.
April 2001 – First iteration of eCorridors website developed.
2001 – A report on e-commerce practices of textiles companies was produced, utilizing the Dan River Textile Mill in Danville and one in North Carolina as case studies.
May 9, 2001 – eCorridors met with Paul Elswick of LENOWISCO to discuss ways in which the southwest communities of Virginia might integrate broadband for economic development objectives.
July 2001 – Host tobacco commission e-58 task force at VT.
December 15, 2001 - The Danville Science Center hosts an eCorridors display of wireless laptop computers running over a wireless network. Community demonstration. Similar Demo in Gretna in early 2002.
January 11, 2002 – eCorridors was invited to give a presentation to Senator George Allen.
January 22, 2002 – Brenda Neidigh gave a presentation to the Southern Governor's Association and SURA regarding the eCorridors concept and strategy.
February 2002 – eCorridors provided support for a proposal by LENOWISCO requesting funds from the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission.
February 2002 - Dan River Region citizens are invited to tune in for a free broadcast of this year's JASON Project to be held February 5, 2002 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. in the Pittsylvania Room of the Learning Resources Center at Danville Community College. Jean Plymale, a member of Virginia Tech's eCorridors team which is looking to extend the eDan initiative, will be moderating the live broadcast from the Danville location. Interaction will take place over the Internet at network speeds that are about 1000 times faster than a dial-up computer connection. Networks with this high-speed capability enable the delivery of interactive broadcast, including quality video and high fidelity audio, both of which are critical components of the JASON Project experiment and distance learning. The "Internet2" application used in this statewide broadcast demonstrates some of what will be capable across this community with eDan.
March 2002 - The Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission issued a Request for Proposals for “e-58”, the first of eCorridors’ conceptual large-scale regional infrastructure initiatives.
July 2002 - one of eCorridors’ initial projects, then known as “e-58” was featured in Virginia Business magazine].
August 2002 - eCorridors introduces the idea of a fiber optic architecture is called a“Geodesic Network Mesh” network, which will interconnect access nodes for all communities within a target area with fully meshed, fiber optic facilities. Each community would be served by fiber connecting it to at least two other communities for increased reliability.
2002 - Erv Blythe and Clark Jones received the Southern Piedmont Technology Council “Stars in Technology” award for their joint efforts and commitment to the Southern Piedmont region in creating a vision for the area, and shaping Virginia Tech's commitment to the region through its eCorridors initiative.
2003 - eCorridors was referenced in the Alliance for Public Technology report, “A Nation of Laboratories: Broadband Policy Experiments in the States”.
March 2003 - The eCorridors Program released the output of a series of studies on issues surrounding the investment and development of strategic telecommunications infrastructure for communities. http://www.ecorridors.vt.edu/research/papers/stircne/index_flash.shtml
The studies utilized the Southside and Southwest Virginia regions as a model for a low-cost Geodesic Mesh network design and viable financial model that could be replicated in any region of the U.S. The overall premise of the studies is that investment in advanced, “next generation” telecommunications infrastructure is an essential and achievable component of a region's economic development and quality of life.
This best practices strategy and design served as a model for the later implementation of a regional broadband network deployed by the MidAtlantic Broadband Cooperative (and link to mbc-va.com), which began in November 2003 and was completed in the fall of 2006.
July 2003 - North Carolina's Congressman Brad Miller announced federal funding for Caswell county to link to the Danville “eCorridors” network.
February 2004 - eCorridors’ work in Danville is mentioned in Light Reading, a telecom industry online newsletter.
2004 - eCorridors is included in the “List of Authorities” for an Amicus Brief submitted by EDUCAUSE in the Nixon vs. Missouri Municipal League, before the Supreme Court of the United States.
July 2005 – eCorridors defines the enterprise GIS project in the IT project database.
Oct. 2005 – eCorridors hosts California Redwood Technology Consortium to discuss rural broadband development, October, 24-25
August 2006 - eCorridors launched the Community Broadband Access Map (CBAM)
June 2007 – First annual report generated from data collected by the Community Broadband Access Map application.
July 2007 – eCorridors presents the Community Broadband Access Map application to the Virginia Chapter of the American Association of Planners at the annual meeting held at Wintergreen Virginia.
2008 – eCorridors assists Drew Clark in the development of the Broadband Census Speed Testing application:
Feb. 2008 - 18 month report generated from data collected by the Community Broadband Access Map using new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) speed tier assignments.
May 2008 - eCorridors adds social networking to the annotated bibliography.
April 2008 - eCorridors hosts the first in a series of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) educational workshop on rural broadband on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 in the Squires Student Center's Haymarket Theater from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
October 2010 - eCorridors launched the Accelerate Virginia website. Accelerate Virginia is a statewide effort to engage and educate the public and raise awareness about broadband availability in Virginia through an innovative broadband mapping application developed by Virginia Tech faculty members.
The telecommunication infrastructure of Singapore spans the entire city-state. Its development level is high, with close accessibility to the infrastructure from nearly all inhabited parts of the island and for all of the population, with exceptions. Today, the country is considered an international telecommunications hub, an achievement that was driven by Singapore's view that high-quality telecommunications is one of the critical factors that support its economic growth.
A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a computer network that interconnects users with computer resources in a geographic region of the size of a metropolitan area. The term MAN is applied to the interconnection of local area networks (LANs) in a city into a single larger network which may then also offer efficient connection to a wide area network. The term is also used to describe the interconnection of several local area networks in a metropolitan area through the use of point-to-point connections between them.
The Internet backbone may be defined by the principal data routes between large, strategically interconnected computer networks and core routers on the Internet.
Pittsylvania County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 63,506. Its county seat is Chatham.
Danville is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States, located on the fall line of the Dan River. It was a major center of Confederate activity during the Civil War, due to its strategic location on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, and today is principal city of the Danville, Virginia Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals, computers, and other devices; and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is sold by Internet service providers (ISPs) delivering connectivity at a wide range of data transfer rates via various networking technologies. Many organizations, including a growing number of municipal entities, also provide cost-free wireless access.
The Iowa Communications Network (ICN) is a state-administered fiber optics network designed to provide equal access to Iowans with modern telecommunication resources.
Fastweb S.p.A. is an Italian telecommunications company that provides landline, broadband Internet and IPTV services. Fastweb is also one of the prominent companies in Italy providing FTTH connections. Fastweb is fully owned by the Swiss telecommunication company Swisscom.
Municipal broadband deployments are broadband Internet access services provided either fully or partially by local governments. Common connection technologies include unlicensed wireless, licensed wireless, and fiber optic cable. Although many cities previously deployed Wi-Fi based solutions, municipal fiber-to-the-home networks are becoming more prominent because of increased demand for modern audio and video applications, which are increasing bandwidth requirements by 40% per year.
State Route 293 is a primary state highway in the U.S. state of Virginia. The state highway runs 7.05 miles (11.35 km) between intersections with U.S. Route 29 Business on the south and north sides of the independent city of Danville. SR 293 is the original alignment of US 29 through Danville, which has been twice bypassed: first by what is now US 29 Business and later by the current US 29 freeway.
State Route 360 is a primary state highway in the U.S. state of Virginia. The state highway runs 41.77 miles (67.22 km) from U.S. Route 360, US 58 Business, and SR 293 in Danville east to US 360 and SR 344 near Scottsburg. SR 360 is the old alignment of US 360 through Danville, eastern Pittsylvania County, and Halifax County, including the latter's county seat of Halifax, before the U.S. Highway was moved to its present course mostly concurrent with US 58 via South Boston.
E-58 is an advanced network infrastructure development effort encompassing communities throughout the Tobacco Region of Virginia, United States, along the line of U.S. Route 58. The Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission is managing e-58 for the economic development interest of the tobacco regions.
The Community Broadband ActS. 1853 was a bill that was never enacted into legislation by the U.S. Senate,110th Congress The act was intended to promote affordable broadband access by allowing municipal governments to provide telecommunications capability and services. Supporters of the bill believed it would have encouraged widespread broadband development in the United States by overturning existing state bans on public broadband deployments and eliminating existing barriers to broadband development.
Merit Network, Inc., is a nonprofit member-governed organization providing high-performance computer networking and related services to educational, government, health care, and nonprofit organizations, primarily in Michigan. Created in 1966, Merit operates the longest running regional computer network in the United States.
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ACD is a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier and Internet Service Provider, headquartered in Lansing, Michigan. ACD provides Fiber Optic Service, Metro Ethernet, Telephone, Hosted Phone Service, DSL, Datacenter and Web hosting services to all types of customers.
EstWin is a project undertaken by Estonia to make 100 Mbit/s wideband internet accessible to every citizen of Estonia by 2015. The development project will be supervised by the Estonian Broadband Development Foundation, which was founded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications and the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications (ITL) on 11 August 2009. The total cost of the EstWin project is estimated to be 6 billion Estonian kroons, a quarter of which is expected to come from the structural funds of European Union. This makes EstWin the biggest project ever signed between the public and private sectors of Estonia.
Phase3 Telecom is an aerial fiber optic network infrastructure provider, providing connectivity, network management and data storage services to wholesale, enterprise and retail customers across West Africa.The company was incorporated in 2003 and is headquartered in Abuja, Nigeria. In 2014 and 2018, the company added over more kilometers to its existing coverage area with footprint expansion of its MPLS network and fixed broadband services. They now operate a 6,000 kilometres (3,700 mi) open-access aerial fibre optic network. The company has been vital to growth in Africa's growing ICT market, implementing the Wire Nigeria Project—conceived by the Nigerian Communications Commission to help provide broadband communications access to rural communities. Phase3 has a broad range of wholesale and enterprise clients including Glo, MTN, 9Mobile, Ntel, Airtel, Smile Communications, World Bank, Julius Berger, Unity Bank e.t.c.Some of the African countries where the company currently has partner operations include Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Republic of Niger.
Neighborly is a San Francisco–based financial technology startup focused on financing and deploying fiber-optic broadband infrastructure in communities around the U.S. A fast-growing, venture-backed company at the intersection of tech, finance, and public infrastructure, Neighborly delivers critical fiber broadband infrastructure to communities, and opportunities to investors who care about closing the digital divide. Fiber broadband networks are the 21st century bridges to economic opportunity: critical for the economic and innovation output of the nation, and the essential foundation for every future-ready community. Previously, Neighborly facilitated municipal bond investments to finance community infrastructure, including schools, libraries, bike paths, and parks. Investors include Emerson Collective, 8VC and Ashton Kutcher's Sound Ventures.
