by Alaina Kanfer
Champaign County Network (CCNet) and Ameritech announced a partnership in mid-March that will bring new Internet services from Ameritech to Champaign County residents and businesses.
Through the partnership, Ameritech will release a series of new products that are designed for the Internet using the Champaign- Urbana area as their test market. The first of these products, the Ameritech Home Professional Package, features an ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network)128 Kbp/s (kilobits per second) line, software specially designed for home professionals and small businesses, and Motorola hardware. Internet access through Ameritech is an optional feature, which is also available through plain old telephone service (POTS) in Champaign-Urbana. Initially, the package will be offered to CCNet members and is expected to be offered to the general public in early summer after beta testing is completed. The beta research is being conducted jointly by NCSA's Education and Outreach Group (E&O) coordinated by Alaina Kanfer and Ameritech's Human Factors Group.
In April, the partnership was described and the Ameritech services were demonstrated to a gathering of nearly 1,500 citizens of Champaign County at the 40th Semiannual Busey Bank Economic Seminar by Ed Scharlau, chairman of Busey's board. In "Reflections on the Past, Preparing for the Future," Scharlau recalled the October 1993 seminar in which he introduced CCNet to his audience [see access, Spring 1994] and went on to applaud the successes of CCNet since its formation.
In announcing CCNet's latest success-the Ameritech partnership- Scharlau shared the podium with Douglas Whitely, president of Ameritech Illinois. Whitely explained that this project combines the best of Champaign County with the best of Ameritech to form a "model electronic community." A year ago Larry Smarr and CCNet Chair Lee O'Neill (Busey Bank) visited Whitely in Chicago and challenged him to dedicate Ameritech's resources to building the testbed in Champaign County. Conventional wisdom of the telecommunications industry is to introduce new products into large markets; Whitely explained that the growth of CCNet caused him to buck the trend and choose Champaign County for Ameritech's test market.
After Scharlau's seminar, members of the community were invited to visit the CCNet/Ameritech Electronic Community exhibit room, with stations featuring demonstrations of the new products and CCNet- developed applications of high-speed networking and the Internet. Throughout the day, the room was filled with interested business people, parents, government officials, and others.
CCNet is a collaboration of the Champaign County Chamber of Commerce, NCSA, and other UIUC units to build a testbed community for high-speed networking and their applications in Champaign County. CCNet began in April 1993 after NCSA Director Larry Smarr challenged the chamber to take advantage of NCSA's unique resources and steer the county onto the information superhighway.
CCNet continues working with Ameritech to identify networking solutions in other community sectors including large business, education, health care, libraries, and government. In addition, CCNet remains committed to the testbed philosophy and hopes to enter into similar partnerships with other vendors in the future.
Alaina Kanfer works with community networking outreach in NCSA's Education and Outreach Group.