INTERSTATE.COM
A new telecommunications network built across West Texas introduces another means for Tech to contribute to the infrastructure of this region.
Written by Robert McComb, Ph.D
A new telecommunications network built across West Texas introduces another means for Texas Tech University to contribute to the social and economic infrastructure of this region. Development completed the build-out of a wireless, high-speed, regional telecommunications backbone or a communications foundation. The 50 Mbps, full-duplex backbone runs along an approximately 200-mile route from Plainview, Texas, to Hobbs, New Mexico. Along this route, the backbone passes through Littlefield, Lubbock, Levelland, Brownfield and Denver City, with an additional branch terminating in Lamesa.
Funded in large part by the Economic Development Administration (U.S. Department of Commerce) and the Lea County (New Mexico) Community Improvement Corporation, the intent of the backbone is to encourage economic development and expand educational interchange in this area. Texas Tech owns the radios and related equipment while municipal and private-sector partners have donated easements on towers and structures on which the radio antennas are mounted. Thus, grants and in-kind contributions totaling nearly $1.3 million have financed this project.
A third of the backbone’s capacity will be devoted to economic development uses, with another third dedicated to educational applications. The quality and reliability of videoconferencing and distance education delivery between points linked to the backbone can be greatly enhanced as a consequence of the high bandwidth and priority routing over an uncongested network. Yet, to fully exploit this asset, much work remains to be completed to build appropriate and flexible end-user interfaces and to assure the creation of valuable content and applications.
While the backbone connects to Tier I Internet in Lubbock, users along the backbone can communicate among themselves without ever having to tap the commodity Internet. In this sense, the Texas Tech University Wireless Communications Network is a wide-area-network available at no or very modest cost to the municipalities, schools, junior colleges and universities along the backbone route that wish to connect. Although Texas Tech will not be either reselling or be directly providing commodity Internet on this network, a path to commodity Internet is available over the backbone.
In some cases, schools may wish to acquire access to Internet2. The Texas Tech transport already has enabled Floydada Independent School District to connect to Internet2 via the university at a very reasonable cost. It should be of some interest to West Texans that these school districts would be among the first in all of Texas to bring Internet2 into the classroom. South Plains College in Levelland also will acquire Internet2 using its link to Texas Tech provided by this new network.
We have not yet started to exploit the additional opportunities for interaction between the different educational levels and locales that this network provides. Without a doubt, the colleges and schools at Texas Tech always have enjoyed significant interchange with regional partners. But new opportunities for applied research to demonstrate the effectiveness of distance delivery of innovative educational applications may be facilitated by the greatly reduced costs of high speed interconnection that the backbone makes possible. For example, students at Texas Tech in the sciences and math might utilize interactive videoconferencing to tutor or mentor younger students in rural settings with limited access to tutoring in science and math curricula.
Small business counseling is an extension of our educational mission. One of the first applications of the Texas Tech regional backbone will be a networked small business incubator that will tie together entrepreneurs in four communities with a business development mentor at the university. Small businesses can flourish when they are able to bring complementary external expertise and experience to their own specific skills and knowledge base. In this instance, the use of videoconferencing to provide ready access to metropolitan-based business support services and a network of fellow entrepreneurs will help to mitigate spatial isolation of rural entrepreneurs and increase their likelihood of success.
Many other possibilities for the use of this backbone exist in areas such as health care, workforce and community development, and adult education. The backbone extends Texas Tech in a substantive way into the communities and schools in our region.
BOB MCCOMB, PH.D., IS AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND GEOGRAPHY AND THE ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AT TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY.
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