LEARN News & Highlights

Texas Receives BTOP Grants

During the past year, the National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA) administered the national Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) grant program to fund broadband technology projects. The projects that have been awarded provide significant partnership opportunities to extend our network of networks. Five projects that were funded are particularly noteworthy for the LEARN community:

Texas Pipes - This project will provide high speed broadband access to all 11 Texas A&M University System universities, the Texas A&M Health Science Center, and communities served by the A&M System. Through a public-private partnership with five independent rural telephone and cable television companies in Texas, the City of Corpus Christi, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), and the Texas A&M System, this grant will fund construction of a fiber optic network capable of supporting up to 40 gigabit of network traffic per second. Grant funds will also enhance public safety by increasing broadband capabilities for campus police departments. The Texas Pipes project will leverage the existing broadband infrastructure of the Texas A&M System's Trans-Texas Videoconferencing Network (TTVN) by building new connections to LEARN that will reach currently underserved areas of Texas.
East Texas Medical and Educational Fiber Optic Network - This project will provide high speed broadband services to educational, healthcare, and government organizations across a 13 county area in eastern Texas. By deploying over 659 miles of new fiber, the project will connect 190 community anchor institutions to network enabled services. A key focus area of the project includes connecting hospitals and other healthcare providers to one another and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler (UTHSCT), which serves as the region's hub for medical care and education. With LEARN's point of presence on the campus of UTHSCT these connections will extend throughout Texas.
Rio Grande Valley Fiber Network - This project will provide high-speed broadband access to 23 community anchor institutions affiliated with higher education institutions in the Rio Grande Valley. Key partners included in the project are the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio, the University of Texas Brownsville, the University of Texas Pan American, and VTX Communications. This project will build on the existing Rio Grande Valley Network, created by a partnership between VTX, Texas A&M University System, and the University of Texas System, that connects to LEARN in Corpus Christi and San Antonio.
Connect Southwest Texas - This project will provide broadband services to 203 community anchor institutions including community colleges, universities, K-12 schools, healthcare institutions, workforce centers, libraries, public safety agencies and the McDonald Observatory. Under the leadership of Education Service Center 18 and the Permian Basin Regional Planning Commission, this public-private partnership will provide broadband services in a 19 county area covering over 37,445 square miles, which includes vast areas of rural southwest Texas.
U.S. UCAN - This national project was awarded to Internet2 and National LambdaRail (NLR) to construct a national backbone that will serve as the foundation for a U.S. Unified Community Anchor Network (UCAN). The purpose of the project is to provide a national backbone to link with regional community anchor networks like LEARN to provide high performance national networking to support 200,000 community anchor institutions across the U.S. The project will deploy 100 gigabit national research and education (R&E) routers in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and El Paso, and will create a new national R&E network segment between Dallas and Nashville.

Presidential Address Streamed Live Via LEARN

On October 17, 2009, President Barack Obama joined President George H. W. Bush, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the stage of Rudder Auditorium at Texas A&M University to help recognize the hundreds of volunteers honored as part of President Bush's 1,000 Points of Light initiative. The event built on President Obama's "United We Serve" call challenging all Americans to help lay a new foundation for growth in this country by engaging in sustained, meaningful community service. More

National Weather Service Partnership

The National Weather Service (NWS) and LEARN recognizes the critical importance of collaboration with public, private and academic partners to achieve our mutual public service mission. Nearly 5,000 National Weather Service scientists, forecasters, technicians and support personnel work closely with the emergency management community, media and other partners to prepare for and mitigate the impacts of natural or man-made events. More

LEARN Network Architecture Mitigates The Impact of Outages

LEARN's network architecture is designed to mitigate the impact of fiber cuts, equipment failures and other network service related outages. Texas A&M University System's Trans-Texas Videoconference Network (TTVN) and the University of Texas System (UT System) have formed a partnership that takes advantage of the redundancy and resiliency of the LEARN network. More

Americas Lightpaths Project

The National Science Foundation funded the Americas Lightpaths (AmLight) project to leverage the existing and future research networks in the Western Hemisphere to support the evolving nature of discovery and scholarship in the research and education community. The project ties together the major research networks of the United States, Brazil, Canada, Chile, and Mexico and interconnects the United States to the Latin America network of RedCLARA, which enables connectivity to 18 Latin America national research and education networks. More