· The overall business climate in the telecommunications sector has changed dramatically over the past 6 – 12 months. There are now almost daily headlines in the business sections of most major newspapers highlighting huge losses, major layoffs, bankruptcies and questionable business practices in this sector of the economy. It is an incredibly turbulent environment in which to attempt the development of partnerships with telecommunications companies. Several of the companies that SURA has been working with as part of the Crossroads Initiative are now in bankruptcy, others have eliminated large portions of their staff and all are now working in an environment where access to capital for new projects and new service development is non-existent. This, of course, is taking place during a general economic downturn with the accompanying tightening of institutional budgets, limiting the ability of SURA’s members to invest in new networking technologies and services.

· The IEEAF is continuing the process of developing donations that could provide access to networking assets in the SURA region. On April 16 the IT Committee Steering Group will meet with representatives from the IEEAF to continue discussions regarding the potential impact of their work in the SURA region.

· As you will recall, in mid-February, SURA informed the set of potential partners that we were working with (Global Crossing, Level3, Southern Telecom, Velocita, Williams) that we were putting our discussions on hold while we worked with the IEEAF to better understand the opportunity that they represented. On March 23, SURA informed the above set of final potential partners that we wish to restart our discussions and asked each company to complete their proposals to SURA regarding their interest in partnering with the SURA community. At this point we do not expect responses from at least two of these companies and, as a result of continued interest on their part, we have invited AT&T, Progress Telecom and ITC Deltacom to submit partnership proposals as well. All proposals are expected to be submitted in time for Geo/Matrix to complete their final report to SURA prior to the upcoming Board of Trustees and IT Committee meetings at the end of April.

· The SURA Crossroads Initiative is now beginning a process to better understand many of the more local requirements for advanced network services within the SURA region. To this end a draft State-based information template has been developed to summarize state and local networking initiatives that could benefit from the information gleaned from the Crossroads Initiative. That template is currently being reviewed by the Crossroads Initiative working group and will be made available on the Crossroads project website when finalized.

Return to Crossroads Updates

|

More on SURA Crossroads