Brenda Marie Rivers
CenturyLink has announced that its optical fiber lines will be used by an academe-government partnership to establish a high-speed network that will be deployed across Oregon in summer 2019.
The Oregon Fiber Partnership, a collaboration between the state government, the Oregon State University and several other public research universities, acquired 1.5K miles of CenturyLink’s fiber lines to develop a network that can withstand disasters and connect the state’s health care providers, educational institutions and community, CenturyLink said Wednesday.
The partnership aims to develop the Network for Education and Research in Oregon, a University of Oregon-based statewide network that connects non-profit groups, local and state government agencies, higher education institutions and school districts.
Jon Dolan, interim vice provost of OSU’s University Information and Technology, said the new network will support Oregonian universities’ research efforts in data-intensive fields including genomics, autonomous vehicles and precision agriculture.
Craig Cupach, director of research and education sales at CenturyLink, said the company is excited to help provide a network backbone that will support advanced research projects that are beneficial to the state.
The network, which will follow three north-south paths and two primarily east-west paths, is expected to accommodate traffic from the networks of the state government, OSU and the Oregon Health and Science University.
