States

get our telecom needs met,” said Jeff Letourneau, associate director for communications and network services. Implementation of bills to keep the university and other state institutions from participating in the NTIA-funded project or similar efforts “would hurt the state,” said Fletcher Kittredge, CEO of Great Works Internet, the company whose name appeared on the BTOP grant application. Both men were commenting on a bill to be considered by state legislators in the current session that would bar state bodies from delivering telecom services beyond those needed by themselves and their tenants. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Stacey Fitts, R-Pittsfield, has said it’s more important to preserve the state’s legacy copper system and carriers than for the university to take part, as planned, in Great Works Internet’s $24.5 million Broadband Technology Opportunities Program project. Legislators in Maine have shown “huge support” for the university’s efforts to use broadband to bring high-speed online parity to the far-flung outposts that serve some of its 42,000 students, Letourneau said. He noted that in 2007 the Legislature voted to direct $3 million to the university for expanding its fiber network as far as Cambridge, Mass., to connect with other institutions. “The idea is to get all our campuses on a level playing field,” Letourneau said. “There are misconceptions floating around about the university being the recipient of this BTOP grant. That’s not the case."Maine Fiber had its genesis in a last-minute flurry of debate as the Aug. 14 deadline for the first round of BTOP grants was nearing, Great Works’ Kittredge told us. Until then a group of private telcos and other companies, including Great Works, was weighing how to contribute the capital needed to amass the requisite $7 million in matching funds for the dark fiber middle-mile project covered in the application to NTIA. At the 11th hour, negotiations broke down. Kittredge said “it all came down to a dispute over control."