NORTH KINGSTOWN – OSHEAN, the nonprofit consortium of local organizations building a high-capacity broadband network throughout Rhode Island, has picked Sidera Networks for installing and maintaining its fiber-optic network in Bristol County, Mass.
Cox Business, a division of Cox Communications, was selected to provide the Rhode Island portion on Monday.
OSHEAN’s network, dubbed Beacon 2.0, aims to deliver affordable broadband service to nonprofit institutions and will include in Massachusetts: the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Stonehill College, Bridgewater State University and Wheaton College. The institutions will be able to connect at 10,000 megabits per second.
“Not only will this increase in connectivity be a game-changer for us today, but our ability to scale up performance over time will be nearly limitless,” said Andrew Darling, director of information technology infrastructure for University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. “In the past, [we were] geographically disadvantaged with the relative lack of affordable access to fiber optic communications.”
Darling added that the high-speed connectivity will enable the university to move “vast amounts” of research and supercomputing data from the School for Marine Sciences and Technology, the Fairhaven Outreach Center and the University of Massachusetts School of Law at Dartmouth.
In Rhode Island, the network will pass through every city and town except for New Shoreham. Cox said it expects to begin installing its portion of the network in May and slates completion for spring 2013.
