Utah Education Network Selects To Deliver High-speed Internet Access and Metro Services via XO

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 08/12/08

The Utah Education Network has signed a three-year agreement with XO Communications to provide high-speed dedicated Internet access and metro private line services to the not-for-profit consortium of higher and public education, libraries, state government and business with headquarters on the campus of the University of Utah.

The Utah Education Network will use the XO network services to provide a high-speed, statewide data network for K-12 schools, colleges and libraries. It will enable the Utah Education Network to provide free professional development workshops for educators; high school and college courses via live interactive video conferencing; and learning resources for all state residents.

"Utah Education Network selected XO Communications based on a competitive bid process involving nine telecom and Internet service providers to increase Internet and WAN backbone capacity for our customers," said Michael Petersen, executive director for the Network.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Network will purchase high-capacity network access services that include XO High-Speed Dedicated Internet Access at Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) speed for nationwide connectivity and XO Metro Private Line services at speeds of 10 gigabits per second for point-to-point connections.