Network COIs
Comprised of the committed Network and Internet Service Providers in the area, the Network Providers Community of Interest (COI) provides the framework that allows ConnectSI to attain its goals within the 20-county region of southern Illinois. By increasing the awareness of the benefits of broadband, providing tools that aggregate demand and focusing on infrastructure improvements and expansion, the COI seeks to promote the acceptance and availability of broadband to the residential, healthcare, education and business communities.
The members of the Network Provider COI understand that only through a certain level of cooperation among competitors will southern Illinois become more competitive in the global economy.
ARRA funding helps bring ConnectSI vision closer to completion
Since its inception, ConnectSI has had the long-term goal of transforming the rural economy of our region by enhancing availability and access to affordable high speed Internet, unlimited educational opportunities and world-class healthcare. It is our belief that these goals can only be accomplished through collaboration, in particular, collaboration between the citizens, businesses, educational institutions, healthcare facilities, public safety organizations, telecommunications companies and other regional stakeholders.
Therefore, ConnectSI, in partnership with the Network Provider COI, is developing a vision to utilize the funds made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). It is ConnectSI’s position that these funds represent a rare opportunity to accelerate our goal of making broadband available to 85% of the population within the 20 southernmost counties in Illinois.
More specifically, ConnectSI’s vision is to leverage federal funding and the knowledge, experience, expertise and facilities of affiliated Network Providers, to create a high bandwidth, low latency fiber-based network that directly connects healthcare, education, emergency responder, municipal, private enterprise and that powers and provides last mile connections to residential customers
By providing direct access to assets in the St. Louis area and to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, this network would span a vast area within the ConnectSI region and power an evolutionary change in the lives, lifestyle and economic outlook of southern Illinoisans.
The specific goals of this project:
- Provide broadband access of 1 MB or more to 85% of the residential population
- Increase the residential broadband adoption rate to 54%
- Enable Electronic Health Records and diagnostic capabilities between and among all 21 hospitals and 42 community health centers through direct fiber connections with a minimum bandwidth of 100 MB
- Enhance public safety capabilities by providing 100 MB interconnectivity between the twenty-three 911 call centers in the region.
- Boost distance learning capabilities between all 6 community colleges and Southern Illinois University Carbondale by providing 100 MB direct fiber connections
- Enhance the ability of K-12 institutions to provide distance learning opportunities by providing fiber-based last mile solutions to a number of schools
- Enhance local communities’ economic development assets by providing last mile fiber connectivity to many business and industrial parks
- Increase the competitiveness of many of the larger local businesses by providing faster broadband at lower cost
- Enable local Internet Service Providers to lower their costs by providing higher speed and lower cost network backhaul capabilities.
- Hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs created and/or saved
- Increases in salaries and new annual wages for many hundreds
- Hundreds of new knowledge based and/or home-based enterprises
- Increases in healthcare coverage for hundreds of families
- Reduction of poverty for hundreds of families
- Improve health outcomes for patients in healthcare system
- Estimated $40 – $50 million investment
- Utilize expertise of ConnectSI’s network provider partners to create:
- Last mile wireless solutions to all unserved areas in region
- Network Application Point — serve as carrier interconnection point, as well as co-location for ASP’s, disaster recovery, etc.
- Bi-state — partnering with a sister group in the St. Louis region, to connect to healthcare, education, employment and private enterprise assets
- Middle mile — 600 + mile fiber network, providing a minimum100 MB transport, 10 MB Internet to all nodes on network that would include healthcare, education, emergency responder, network providers, private enterprise, municipalities, etc.