Emerging Markets
In the last decade, many higher education institutions have bought up large quantities of existing fiber optics sitting dormant. Starting in 1999, Larry Starr, a technology director from the University of Illinois, connected the Urbana-Champaign campus to major academic, research, and telecommunications facilities in the Chicago area. At the same time, other schools began creating large urban networks to directly connect their school campuses with hospitals and large telecommunications companies in metropolitan areas. Since then, the U.S. research and education (R&E) community have been aggressively pursuing a revolutionary new means for delivering advanced networking capabilities. With the plummeting prices of fiber due to the over abundance, the option to own fiber networks has stomped out the competition leasing of commercial circuits elsewhere. Experts say that a mile of dark fiber that in the past would sell for $1,200 has sold, for as low $200 or less. The downturn in telecommunications has offered significant savings to schools, since intercity networks may include several hundred to several thousand miles of fiber optic cable.
Read more about this topic: Dark Fibre
Famous quotes containing the words emerging and/or markets:
“Adolescents, for all their self-involvement, are emerging from the self-centeredness of childhood. Their perception of other people has more depth. They are better equipped at appreciating others’ reasons for action, or the basis of others’ emotions. But this maturity functions in a piecemeal fashion. They show more understanding of their friends, but not of their teachers.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“When the great markets by the sea shut fast
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on:
When even lovers find their peace at last,
And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.”
—James Elroy Flecker (1884–1919)