SURA Crossroads:
Information for Potential Partners

The SURA Crossroads Initiative (formerly the Regional Infrastructure Initiative) has been organized to leverage the collective assets (monetary, physical and intellectual) of SURA and its member institutions to develop a new model for providing network connectivity for the Southern United States. With SURA's long history of regional academic collaboration and the strong support of SURA's member institutions, the SURA Crossroads Initiative is poised to develop the creative industry, government and educational partnerships that will make it possible to take advantage of recent advances in networking technology to provide a new level of network connectivity for the Southern U.S.

This vision of a fiber infrastructure dedicated to research, education and the economic development of the whole South, both rural and metropolitan, is one that can bring a new level of economic competitiveness to SURA's members and the SURA region in general. A regional research and education network built with access to dark fiber could dramatically reduce the cost per megabit for network transport thereby creating an environment capable of supporting innovative high bandwidth research and education applications.

To visualize the scope of this program, the following additional information, including maps of the SURA region and its member and selected non-member locations, is available: