SDN Communications celebrated the start of construction on Project Connect South Dakota at a groundbreaking event on Monday, August 23 at Rapid City Regional Hospital (the first of 305 sites to be built to).
If you’d like to read the official press release, click here. And if you’d like to see photos of the event, including pictures of Governor Mike Rounds and our CEO, Mark Shlanta addressing the crowd, click here.
Interested in reading more? Here a few media links that provided coverage of the day:
KELOLAND, Sioux Falls, SD
KOTA Radio, Rapid City, SD
Rapid City Journal, Rapid City, SD
KEVN TV, Rapid City, SD
Telecompetitor
If you’re interested in even more about Project Connect South Dakota, click here to read our FAQ sheet and see a map of the progress we’re making across South Dakota.
Renee Halgerson
Marketing Specialist
SDN Communications
The new Quantum Broadband Network is so secure, it’s unbreakable. So far.
By relying on the laws of quantum mechanics as a security mechanism, Toshiba researchers have created a theoretically hack-proof speed data link. But is this new high-speed network connection really impossible to hack? And how does it work?
The technology involves the sender embedding a “key” within the message. The receiving party is only allowed access to this data, and if a third party tries to mess with the quantum key, the key will be altered, signaling a hack, and remain encrypted.
What makes this technology so breakthrough? “It was Toshiba’s development of a photon detector that can actually pick up individual photons at the hard-to-detect wavelengths required for long-distance data transmissions,” says the article from Popular Science online.
Is it really impossible to hack this new fiber? Click here to read the rest of the story and the comments, which both challenge and support this new unbreakable Quantum Broadband Network.
Renee Halgerson
Marketing Specialist
SDN Communications
SDN Communications has been telling the story about our “One Common Thread.” It demonstrates how our fiber optic network reaches into eight states—but more importantly, reaches into the lives of almost everyone in South Dakota. We’ve brought you the story of baby Everett in Parkston. His life was saved because of telemedicine technology traveling SDN’s network. We’ve told you about CorTrust Bank in Artesian and how their customers can access their acount from anywhere in the word thanks to SDN’s network. And now, the story of how every school in South Dakota is connected with SDN’s fiber optics. When Estelline High School couldn’t hire a foreign language teacher, an SDN broadband connection brought Aberdeen teachers to them through the DDN distance learning video system.
Have you seen our television commercial about Estelline High School?
If you liked that, and if you liked what you read about being “behind the scenes” at Estelline, you’ll enjoy the extented version of our newest commercial:
Renee Halgerson
Marketing Specialist
SDN Communications
SDN Communications has worked hard, together with our member companies, to connect rural South Dakota. Our Midwest Region offers broadband internet in some of the most remote areas, giving them a better business advantage.
South Dakota’s cooperative and family-owned telephone companies have always delivered the best service to customers. They connected phone service where the big companies wouldn’t go. Now they do the same thing with high-speed Internet. Today you can do business as easily from Buffalo, South Dakota, as you can from Buffalo, New York.
SDN Communications serves over 300 communities in South Dakota alone. We’ve expanded our fiber-optic reach into seven surrounding states which means greater potential for the people we serve.
Click here to read an article from Prairie Business Magazine about how telecommunication companies in the region are working together to expand opportunities for rural areas.
Renee Halgerson
Marketing Specialist
SDN Communications
All schools across South Dakota are already connected with SDN’s fiber optic network. Late in 2009, SDN Communications was awarded a $20 million federal grant in order to boost that fiber optic network to over 300 anchor institutions including those schools, goverment agencies, National Guard locations and more.
Schools like Estelline will see a direct benefit from SDN’s additional fiber capacity. With SDN bringing 10 megabit-per-second Internet access, the school can expand its offering of video distance classes.
Joey Struwe, Estelline’s district network administrator, says, “Obviously, having a teacher stand in front of the classroom and teaching is ideal. That’s what you’d want, but that’s not possible in all situations. We have limited resources and this connectivity just helps us enhance the number of things we can offer our students.”
Click the links below to see how SDN Communications is making a difference for schools across the state:
Click here to read all the details about the $20 million Stimulus Grant on SDN’s blog.
Renee Halgerson
Marketing Specialist
SDN Communications
We’re excited to announce that SDN was one of 18 companies chosen nationally to receive a $20 million broadband stimulus grant. Vice President Joe Biden made the announcement in Dawsonville, GA Thursday morning. SDN will be required to do a $5 million match. We will have three years to complete 359 miles of fiber to un-served and underserved areas of South Dakota. The intent is to benefit anchor institutions, such as hospitals, schools, and government offices.
SDN and its owner/member companies will be able to provide 10 Megabit per second service to 219 existing anchor institution customers in rural and underserved areas of the state and connect 305 new anchor institutions.
So, what does that mean to us living in South Dakota? These additional broadband connections will help bridge the digital gap and boost economic development. Rural communities will be better equipped to attract high-tech jobs and talent in the long term, helping them compete on a world-wide scale.
Here are some links to news stories across the nation if you want to read more about how SDN will help connect the state:
PraireBusiness, Grand Forks, ND
Sioux City Journal, Sioux City, IA
Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA
Washington Examiner, Washington, DC
Renee Halgerson
Marketing Specialist
SDN Communications
One bundle of fiber cable (not much thicker than a pencil) can carry ALL of the world’s current communications traffic. But because of exploding business data and research needs, multiple simultaneous HD channels and possibly 3D “holographic” HDTV and games on the market, there is a need for more. Much more. How much bandwidth is enough? Think 20 to 30 Gigibits per second to homes and businesses in a decade. Obsolete copper technology can’t do even 1/1000th of that bandwidth, and then not for more than a few hundred yards.
SDN Communications is seeing the trend. Equipping an existing fiber network with newer electronics and with lasers that pulse light faster (or lasers using different wavelengths of light) can vastly increase the available bandwidth without changing the fiber itself. That’s why fiber networks, like SDN’s, are said to be “future proof.”
What does the future hold? A standard-definition TV signal requires a bandwidth of about 2 Mbps — two million bits (zeros and ones) per second. HDTV requires as much as 8 Mbps. New compression technology, such as MPEG4, 3D-immersive HDTV (a technology already being used in some academic and industrial settings) will require 100 to 300 Mbps.
This comparison may help show how 1Gbps could look small a decade from now:
We have absolutely no reason to think that innovation will stop. Neither will the need for more bandwidth. That’s why SDN is ready for the future. We’ve already built the Research Education and Economic Development (REED) Network across our eight-state network. How powerful is SDN’s REED Network?
- It can offer bandwidth of 50,000 Mpbs to universities and research institutions.
- It’s so fast, it can download the entire text of the U.S. Library of Congress in 12 minutes.
Bandwidth needs are always increasing. SDN Communications embraces the opportunity to expand its reach beyond the hundreds of businesses and communities we already serve, delivering the best and most reliable network in the region.
Renee Halgerson
Marketing Specialist
SDN Communications
Source: The Advantages of Fiber: FTTH Council, July 2009
