Inside VT KnowledgeWorks

New Hampshire Fiber to Home Network to be Built by Design Nine

Andrew Cohill, President of Design Nine and founder of VT KnowledgeWorks member company Web Villages, announced that FastRoads LLC has selected Design Nine to manage the build out of the FastRoads fiber to the home project that is being funded by a U.S. Department of Commerce NTIA ARRA broadband stimulus award.  FastRoads LLC is owned by the nonprofit Monadnock Economic Development Corporation, and represents 43 towns in west and west-central New Hampshire.  The funding will make fiber to the business and fiber to the home available in Enfield and Rindge, New Hampshire and twenty other towns along a one hundred mile north-south route.  The FastRoads service territory covers about a quarter of the state. 

Design Nine developed the stimulus proposal submitted by FastRoads, and also designed the financial planning and network architecture needed for the grant proposal.  Cohill noted that his firm will manage the entire network build out, which will include equipment evaluation and selection, coordination of engineering and construction activities, testing of the network, installation of network management and monitoring software, and design of management and operations of the network. 

Design Nine’s high performance design will provide 100 megabit, Gigabit, and 10Gigabit fiber connections anywhere a FastRoads customer requests them.  The FastRoads vision is “Live anywhere, work anywhere,” which requires a network capable of delivering business class services anywhere in the entire region.

Andrew Cohill was quoted in Bandwidth boost in The Roanoke Times. A free copy of Andrew Cohill's white paper, Broadband For America: The Third Way, is available for download here.  

To learn more, you're invited to read the Design Nine blog, Design Nine Technology Futures, follow Design Nine on Twitter @DesignNine, and read about Design Nine's founder, Andrew Cohill, on Handshake 2.0 in Clicking Back Over the Years - Most Wired Town in America and Most Wired Town: Building Community One Click at a Time.  Design Nine announced The Wired Road - Integrated Fiber and Wireless Municipal Network.

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VT KnowledgeWorks encourages and enables creative entrepreneurship world-wide, through innovative curriculum, local business resource centers, and a global network of cooperating regions, all focused on three essential contributors to success: clear understanding of fundamental business principles; access to timely, relevant information; and meaningful personal and corporate relationships. It is a self-sustaining not-for-profit subsidiary of the Virginia Tech Foundation, funded through the continuing confidence and enthusiasm of its clients, sponsors and friends, both corporate and individual.  Its world headquarters is in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.

VT KnowledgeWorks sponsors include Attaain, Inc., BB&T, The Branch Group, Handshake 2.0, Harris Office Furniture, Hodges, Jones & Mabry, P.C., Hutchison Law Group, LeClairRyan, New River Valley Intellectual Property Law, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and The Becher Agency (TBA).

A Vision for Broadband

Andrew Cohill, broadband expert and founder of Design Nine and of VT KnowledgeWorks member company Web Villages, was quoted in Bandwidth boost by Jeff Sturgeon for The Roanoke Times.  An excerpt:

Should fiber lines be, like roads, owned by the government? Or, should the job be left to phone and cable companies, which installed and privately own the cables that carry most Web traffic today and are already investing heavily in system improvements including fiber-optic cable?

Advocates for broadband Internet over fiber-optic cable say the answers can't come too soon, and add that the region is already trailing.

"This region doesn't really have a solid plan how are we going to get big broadband everywhere," said Andrew Cohill, former director of the Blacksburg Electronic Village and now a private consultant whose firm, Design Nine in Blacksburg, helps communities get fiber-delivered Internet. Installing and maintaining that fiber -- though not being the service provider -- is a role for local governments or community nonprofits to consider, he said.

"We think it's got to be treated like essential public infrastructure," he said.

That way, access would be open to any service provider on equal footing. Just as anyone could launch a cab company or food delivery service over the road system, anyone will be able to use the information highway's new lanes. This creates competition, and competition lowers prices.

Cohill has seen it happen elsewhere. One of about 100 U.S. regions getting aggressive in this area is western Massachusetts, where 47 localities combined efforts to install fiber-optic Internet cabling to homes covering about one-quarter of the state, he said.

"Their vision is fiber everywhere. Fiber to every home, every business," Cohill said.

via www.roanoke.com

A free copy of Andrew Cohill's white paper, Broadband For America: The Third Way, is available for download here.  Design Nine announced The Wired Road - Integrated Fiber and Wireless Municipal Network.

Design Nine provides broadband network planning, network design services, and network construction services to clients, communities, and regions throughout the U.S.  The firm has active projects in six states, with several fiber to the home (FTTH) projects in build out or operations, including the first municipal open access network in the U.S. Design Nine manages broadband fiber and wireless projects from beginning to end, including the initial assessment, design, construction, and operations phases. 

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VT KnowledgeWorks is a unique growth enhancement program open to entrepreneurs in the New River Valley and beyond.  Acceleration center and incubation facilities are located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, Virginia.  Programs for Members are divided into two categories according to the evolutionary status of the member company.  Pre-Launch program components are carefully constructed to help market-worthy ventures organize, formulate strategy, obtain outside investment, and launch in an efficient manner.  Enterprise class members benefit from emphasis on strategic support for ongoing growth, continuing intra-preneurship, and professional development for the corporate leader.

VT KnowledgeWorks sponsors include Attaain, Inc., BB&T, Handshake 2.0, Harris Office Furniture, Hodges, Jones & Mabry, P.C., Hutchison Law Group, LeClairRyan, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and The Becher Agency (TBA).

Broadband For America: The Third Way - A White Paper by Andrew Cohill

Andrew Cohill is the founder of Web Villages, a VT KnowledgeWorks member company.

An excerpt of a post follows that originally appeared on Handshake 2.0:

Broadband For America: The Third Way, a white paper by Andrew Cohill, is generating interest nationally for its new approach to solving America's broadband problems.  The paper proposes adopting a different business model and a different network architecture  to overcome the inherent financial shortcomings and network inefficiencies in existing telecom networks while keeping government out of direct competition with the private sector. The approach creates new business opportunities for existing service providers, including incumbents.  The strategy advocates separating services from infrastructure, using the time-tested "roads" model. The "third way" advocates building local and regional digital road systems managed much the same way communities build and manage vehicular road networks. 

A free copy of Andrew Cohill's white paper, Broadband For America: The Third Way, is available for download here.

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VT KnowledgeWorks, a regional business acceleration center that helps companies bring ideas to market, will present the Second Annual Entrepreneurship Summit on April 7-8, 2010 at the Inn at Virginia Tech & Skelton Conference Center in Blacksburg, Virginia. This two-day comprehensive workshop is for prospective company founders, entrepreneurs launching or re-vamping a business, growing companies seeking expansion capital, and individuals interested in investing in early-stage companies.

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VT KnowledgeWorks sponsors include Attaain, Inc., BB&T, Handshake 2.0, Harris Office Furniture, Hodges, Jones & Mabry, P.C., Hutchison Law Group, Latimer, Mayberry & Matthews IP Law, LeClairRyan, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and The Becher Agency (TBA).