UI, ISU, UNI will benefit from broadband expansion

The University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa will benefit from the planned expansion of the nation's broadband network announced last week by The White House, university officials and the state Board of Regents leaders said in a statement Tuesday. 

President Barack Obama announced July 2 investment in 66 new American Recovery and Reinvestment Act broadband projects nationwide that are expected to create about 5,000 jobs initially and help spur economic development.  The $795 million in grants and loans through the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Agriculture has been matched by more than $200 million in outside investment, for a total public-private investment of more than $1 billion.  This includes approximately $90 million in grants and loans coming to Iowa for several broadband Internet projects.

Also included is a $16.2 million grant for upgrades to the Iowa Communication Network (ICN), a 3,000-mile fiber optic  network that provides voice, video, data, WAN connections, and Internet service to Iowa K-12 schools, higher education (including the UI, UNI and ISU, which use the ICN for outreach activities and online courses), hospitals, state and federal government, National Guard armories and libraries.

As major research universities, ISU and the UI will benefit from a $62.5 million grant, with an additional $34.3 million applicant-provided match, which will support the United States Unified Community Anchor Network (U.S. UCAN) project.  This project will create a nationwide, high-capacity network that will enable advanced networking features for more than 100,000 essential community anchor institutions, which include the UI and ISU, through a large-scale, public-private partnership of more than 30 existing, interconnected research and education networks. One of the networks is the Broadband Optical Research, Education and Sciences Network (or BOREAS), a collaboration of four major research institutions in the upper Midwest that includes the UI and ISU.

“We are proud to be a beneficiary of this major investment which will advance our technologies for the state and further enhance the contributions of Iowa's public universities to Iowans," Regents President David Miles, of West Des Moines, said. "I am grateful for the strong inter-institutional collaboration that has made this funding possible and which will contribute to the success of this effort going forward.”

UI Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer Steve Fleagle said the funding would be used to increase the network's capacity tenfold, which will go a long way toward enabling inter-institutional research collaboration improving the quality and reach of videoconferencing and distance education classes, professional training and other services offered by and through the UI and ISU.

ISU Vice Provost for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer Jim Davis said the planned improvements in speed effectively eliminate distance as a barrier to sharing expensive laboratory or computing equipment. 

“For example, scientists could connect a virtual reality facility at one university to a supercomputer located elsewhere and share enormous amounts of data as though they were in the same laboratory," he said.