Posted on March - 28 - 2010
Case Western Reserve leads experiment in ultra-fast Internet connectivity
In about two months, more than 100 homes on Hessler Street in Cleveland and several local institutions will get Internet access that should be way, way faster than the connection you’re on right now.
Case Western Reserve University is leading a year-long experiment that will allow the university, several area hospitals and the residents of Hessler Street to access the Internet at speeds of 1 gigabyte per second, which is about 100 times faster than standard cable and phone line connections.
“Today,” said CWRU chief information officer Lev Gonick, “you couldn’t subscribe to that service if you had all the money in China.”
The university will track how the participants end up using the service, said CWRU chief information officer Lev Gonick. It also is encouraging participating institutions — including the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals Health System and MetroHealth System — to come up with ways to exploit the technology.
The university already has connected one home in the University Circle district to the high-speed service to showcase how such fast connectivity could change people’s lives. For instance, the demonstration home includes Internet-connected scales and other equipment patients could use to send medical information to their doctors, as well as a video conferencing system, “smart meters” designed to help control the home’s internal temperature and video cameras that a security service could review from afar.
Connecting the homes on Hessler Street is particularly important, given how few inner-city residents subscribe to Internet service, Mr. Gonick said.
“Seventy percent of people around the university do not have any broadband,” he said.
The university had applied for $29 million in federal stimulus money to fund a larger project but did not receive it. Mr. Gonick would not disclose the cost of the Case Connection Zone project.
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