Project Promises
Dr. Marcy Johnson, director of distance learning at North Carolina A&T, says she envisions that their participation will enable the Greensboro, N.C.-based university to expand the delivery base of the school's online degree programs and courses to communities where there's low Internet access. North Carolina A&T, one of the first HBCUs to offer full online degree programs and courses, has an agriculture school, which offers cooperative extension services to farmers and residents across North Carolina. She says school officials are developing a proposal outlining community facilities where the university will seek to establish the satellite-delivered Internet access points.
Johnson says the urban-based campus likely will get a satellite dish connection for high bandwidth access at the school's farm just outside Greensboro. Such a connection would significantly improve the ability of agriculture researchers to access complex research data over the Internet, according to Johnson.
"[The farm] doesn't have fast Internet access. They rely on slow telephone modems to do research using the Internet," Johnson says.
The project has the consortium partnered with the San Diego-based Tachyon company, which sells the two-way satellite-delivered Internet access system to farmers, businesses and other consumers. Tachyon's satellites offer data rates of 300 Kbps to 2 Mbps.
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