St. Joe Valley Metronet experts, IT professionals, business owners and county officials gathered yesterday afternoon to get a grasp on the Metronet project and how it will help businesses in Marshall County.
Mary Jan Hedman from St. Joe Valley Metronet said the company helps with the installation of the conduit and dark fiber cable.
“We then allow the organization to light the fiber at whatever bandwidth they need,” explained Hedman. “This is a vendor neutral network. Any organization can lease it. It could be a carrier or a service provider. We leave the network open to anybody that wants to use the dark fiber.”
Dark fiber is the future of connectivity as most all work is computer based and internet based. It creates a large amount of bandwidth at a much faster speed. Hedman says that is critical in today’s business world.
“It eliminates any kind of bandwidth or connectivity barrier that an organization may be currently experiencing or may experience in the future. They find all kinds of great uses for it. It’s then they start to expand their business in ways using technology that they haven’t been able to do before.”
The installation of the conduit is still ongoing in Marshall County and the project is expected to be complete in October. Hedman expects to get businesses up and lighting dark fiber even before that.
Organizations using Metronet are achieving speeds of 10 gbps with potential for even greater speed. Whatever the bandwidth needs are, it can be accommodated.
