· On Feb 11 the Crossroads Partner Development Team met with Geo/Matrix Consultants in Atlanta to discuss how best to react to the potential availability of network transport in the SURA region through the Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation and the rapidly changing financial conditions of our selected set of potential partners.

· The SURA IT Committee met on February 14. The status of the Crossroads Initiative was one of the principal topics of discussion. At this meeting, Don Riley, as Chair of the IEEAF, made a presentation describing the activities of the IEEAF. Much of the focus of the IEEAF has been on securing donations of bandwidth for both continental US and international connectivity. The most significant donations to date are for US-Europe and US-Japan-Singapore. An expected US donation currently being negotiated, as described by Don, could have a very significant impact on access to low cost, high capacity bandwidth between the major existing aggregation points in the SURA region. Don indicated that he expected this donation to be confirmed within 4 weeks (today Don indicated it may be more like mid-May). As a result of this development, the IT Committee agreed that SURA should delay further discussions with the five final potential partners (Global Crossing, Level3, Southern Telecom, Velocita and Williams) until after mid-March.

A letter was distributed to the five final potential partners indicating that we are delaying further discussions with them regarding the partnership proposal process that was underway until after mid-March.

· At the SURA Board of Trustees Executive Committee on February 25, Jed Diem and Gary Crane discussed the current status of the SURA Crossroads Initiative and the potential of the developments that are taking place with the work of the IEEAF. The Executive Committee was very interested in these developments and is very interested in understanding the impact of the possible availability of donated network services through the IEEAF. The Executive Committee also indicated that the Crossroads Initiative should include more than interconnecting the major cities in the region.

· The Crossroads Initiative Working Group (still meeting every Monday via conference call) has been working to refocus the work of the Crossroads Initiative in light of a possible donation of network transport services in the SURA region through the IEEAF. This work has resulted in a proposed refocusing of the Crossroads Initiative efforts to a more localized state and/or project based approach to connecting to a regional backbone. As a result SURA is now developing a process to identify local network infrastructure initiatives (whole states, multiple members within a state or multi-state initiatives) within the SURA region. Our intent is to identify the networking environment within each state in the SURA region and find ways to leverage the work of the Crossroads Initiative for their benefit. SURA will also make a final effort to collect the connectivity cost surveys from those SURA members who have not yet completed a survey.

· SURA Connectivity Cost Survey Status:
Thirty-four of the fifty-seven institutional surveys have been returned completed. This survey represents our attempt at understanding the aggregate cost of the network connectivity services of our members. This information will be used to help determine the economic feasibility of a region-wide shared network service. Individual institutional information provided through responses to these surveys will be held confidential. It will not be shared with vendors or other members of SURA. Only aggregate information will be used in the SURA Crossroads feasibility study. If you haven’t already completed a SURA connectivity cost survey for your institution, please contact Gary Crane (gcrane@sura.org) for a copy of the survey or for answers to any questions you may have about the survey.

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