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Sandoval, LambdaRail Near Deal(Albuquerque Journal (NM) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dec. 19--Sandoval County is close to signing a contract with the organization that oversees a super high speed national data network. Access to the National LambdaRail, a consortium of 20 corporations and universities -- including three New Mexico universities -- will give communities in Sandoval County opportunities for distance learning and telemedicine at speeds dozens of times faster than currently possible with commercial Internet. "It's a pretty large alphabet soup of capabilities," said Dewayne Hendricks, CEO of the Fremont, Calif .-based Dandin Group. Hendricks is in charge of establishing infrastructure for Sandoval Broadband, the company creating the county's own high speed Internet network. Sandoval County and New Mexico National LambdaRail have agreed on the terms and conditions for the county's access to the network at a connection point in Albuquerque, overseen by the University of New Mexico, said Gary Bauerschmidt, associate director of information technology services for UNM. New Mexico LambdaRail is the nonprofit organization created by UNM, New Mexico Tech and New Mexico State University to administer the National LambdaRail contract. Sandoval County will be the first outside organization to sign up for access. The cost will be $50,000 annually, Bauerschmidt said. A date for the contract signing has not been set, according to Hendricks. But he characterized the signing as "a formality." "We're moving ahead with connecting up," Hendricks said. Sandoval Broadband has spent nearly $100,000 building infrastructure -- getting rights of way, digging trenches and laying fiber -- from its Downtown Albuquerque broadband center at 505 Marquette NW (the Compass Bank building) to the UNM LambdaRail connection point at 104 Gold SE. It signed a deal last summer to buy broadband capacity from IXNM, which owns a fiber network headquartered at 505 Marquette. Sandoval Broadband uses microwave antennas mounted on the roof of the bank building to transmit data to the Sandoval County Courthouse in Bernalillo. Sandoval County has said it wants to create the network to provide affordable high speed Internet access to schools, emergency services and municipal offices in underserved communities and rural areas. Copyright (c) 2006, Albuquerque Journal, N.M. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |