paper -
42 On the Road to Becoming a Statewide ISP
Roman
Olynyk, WVNET
This paper discusses the technical and policy issues
that West Virginia Network (WVNET) encountered when it expanded its statewide
Internet dialup service through an outsourcing partnership. Although this outsourcing project is still
in its infancy, much can be learned from our experiences to date.
WVNET provides dialup Internet access for state higher
education. We currently serve
approximately 12,000 Internet dialup modem users clustered around 28 higher
education campuses statewide. A WVNET
modem account holder can dial in to the Internet from any one of these
locations.
Although these 28 higher education locations covered a
significant portion of the state, there remained areas where there were no
other ISPs, and a long-distance call was the only way to get onto the
Internet. Additionally, local and state
government entities were looking toward WVNET for many of the same services it
has been traditionally providing for state higher education.
In late 1999, Bell Atlantic Data Solutions Group (DSG)
offered to WVNET a partnership plan:
DSG would assume access, engineering and management responsibilities for
WVNET’s Internet dialup service, while WVNET would continue to “own” its
relationship with the higher education institutions. The plan called for the creation of a single, in-state toll-free
telephone number with which WVNET customers could dial into the Internet. Busy lines and modems would be virtually
eliminated, because calls could be load-balance across the state. It would allow us to provide unlimited
access. Sounds almost too good to be
true?
Stay tuned to learn about some of the technical support and policy issues that we encountered in the implementation of a statewide Internet dialup modem project.
Keywords: ISP, partnership, outsourcing, dialup support