A member of United States Unified Community Anchor Network (UCAN), the partner group that put together the recently awarded $62.5 million NTIA application for federal Broadband Recovery Act funding, Infinera yesterday announced its partnership in the project, which will leverage the Sunnyvale company´s Digital Optical Neworks.
UCAN aims to build out a 3.2 terabit/second network that will come to support some 200,000 “community anchor institutions,” libraries, community colleges, health centers and public service organizations across the US. The partnership is led by national research and education networks Internet2, National LambdaRail, the Northern Tier Network Consortium and Indiana University. The new national network will support a variety of applications including telemedicine, distance learning, and “… other services to help rural areas and depressed areas use technology to achieve opportunities on a par with other parts of the country…”
Infinera was chosen to provide the national backbone network to Internet2 members. The company´s Digital Optical Networks are touted as delivering a minimum 100 Gb/s of capacity on every network route. “Internet2 is pleased to extend our long standing partnership with Infinera through their participation in this important national project. Infinera’s innovative technology, excellent reliability, and ease of use will be critical to ensuring the advanced network capabilities promised by this network,” said Rob Vietzke, Internet2 executive director of network services, in a news release.
