News tagged with Shawnee Telephone

Connecting Southern Illinois with Opportunities Since 2006

Roxana Ryan, Jun 14, 2012

The twenty southernmost counties of Illinois have been focused on broadband as an economic development tool since 2006. ConnectSI, a foundation dedicated to fueling these rural economies through broadband, agriculture, education, and healthcare initiatives, partnered with Broadband Illinois and now serves as the Southern eTeam. 

Four Illinois telephone utilities to receive over $71 million in U.S. Ag Department funds to build, expand and improve broadband in rural areas.

Nov 16, 2011

Telephone utilities in 18 states will receive nearly $500 million in U.S. Agriculture Department funds to build, expand and improve broadband in rural areas.

Building the Gigabit State in Southern Illinois

On Broadband, Jun 2, 2011

By Drew Clark

CARBONDALE, Illinois, June 2, 2011 – Boiled down to its bare essentials, a major research university like Southern Illinois University here needs three things to prosper: good students, great faculty, and world-class internet bandwidth.

The only major research university in the southern half of Illinois, SIU has the first two out of three. But according to John Koropchak, a professor of chemistry and Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Dean at the university, the availability of bandwidth for SIU maxes out at 380 Megabits per second (Mbps). 

Guidelines by the National Science Foundation call for bandwidth availability to be 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) to 2.5 Gbps. That’s up to seven times the bandwidth currently available.