L-R: Dr. Yi Deng, UNCC Computing & Informatics Dean; Joanna Jasper, Catawba College C.I.O.; N.C. Governor and 1978 Catawba College Alumnus Pat McCrory; Catawba College President Brien Lewis; Susan Kluttz, N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Secretary; Robert Van Geons, Executive Director of Rowan Works and a 1997 Alumnus; Salisbury Mayor Paul B. Woodson, Jr.; Kent Winrich, Director of Fibrant; Geoff Burke, Calix Sr. Director of Corporate Marketing
Stressing the need to remain competitive, N.C. Governor Pat McCrory '78 came home to his alma mater, on Sept. 3 to be part of an announcement about Salisbury being America's first 10 gigabit city and Catawba College being the first to offer the 10 Gbps service.
Thanks to a partnership with Calix, Inc., Salisbury now has 10 gigabit per second (Gbps) available to every premise in the city through the municipally-owned Fibrant. Catawba's 10 Gbps service is powered by Calix E5-520 Ethernet Service Access Node (ESAN).
"I'm proud of this city and this college for thinking ahead about how we can be competitive," McCrory said to the crowd of dignitaries and local officials who gathered in Tom Smith Auditorium of Ketner Hall for the announcement. Emphasizing the importance of the internet as a new way of connecting, he added, "If you can't get connected, you fall behind."
Catawba President Brien Lewis said, "Thanks to Fibrant, new opportunities await us."
Catawba's Chief Information Officer Joanna Jasper added that thanks to this new service, "The future really is here!" She explained that initially the 10-gig internet will only be available at select campus locations although the institution's goal "is to make the network infrastructure improvements necessary to support higher data transmission rates all across campus."
Noting that 10-gig internet is of particular use for bandwidth-intense applications like high-definition video and big-data projects, she added, "In the video area, we are looking at turning some of our meeting rooms, classrooms, and computer labs into video-conferencing spaces that can support many high-definition video participants as well as live high-definition video-streaming.
Jasper
"In the big-data area, we expect this 10-gig connection will open up many new research and experiential learning opportunities for our faculty and students. Also, because the transmission of our data-center backups will be many times faster, we can do more frequent backups to our offsite disaster recovery facility."
