Wiring for speed

Two companies join to bring fiber-optic network to State College

Increased technology will be coming over the river and through the woods -- or at least over the mountain.

Allegheny Hyperion Telecommunications LLC, a joint venture between Allegheny Energy Inc. and Hyperion Telecommunications Inc., will construct a fiber-optic network between Altoona and State College, said Gary Augustson, executive director of computer and information systems for the University, at a news conference Friday afternoon at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel.

The University will benefit from the companies' more than $10 million investment and the increased technology that will be brought into the area when the broadband system is completed next fall, University President Graham Spanier said at the news conference.

Broadband lines such as fiber-optic wire are capable of carrying high amounts of information, including high-quality audio and video, compared to traditional data carriers such as copper wire.

This broadband access will help the University with its work on Internet 2 and the World Campus, which provides electronic distance education, Spanier said. Internet 2 is a collaboration among more than 100 U.S. universities to create a new computer network that will provide increased learning and teaching capabilities.

For students at the University, the network will increase the access they have been accumulating in recent years, Augustson said. Technologies such as the number of E-mail messages sent each day, the number of students with modems in their dorm rooms and the number of computers attached to the University's network, will be added to by virtue of the new network, he said.

"If you look at five years back, what didn't the students have . . . (Those are) things you can't live without now," Augustson said. "This is going to provide what you can't live without five years from now."

Although it is not a problem now, this network will overcome any problems the University could run into because of its relatively isolated location by bringing the "fiber over the mountain," he said. The fiber-optic wire and the access it brings are usually only available to large urban areas, he said.

The money the companies have invested in the central Pennsylvania area will bring advantages to State College businesses with the increased access and technology, expanded services and possibilities for economic development, said Randy Fowler, senior vice president for Hyperion Telecommunications, at the news conference.

"That economic development is going to require wide-width (telecommunications network) and that's what we can provide," he said.