The V.I. Next Generation Network’s broadband network is nearing the finish line and, at Friday’s board meeting on St. Thomas, company officials spoke about everything from the opening of more public computer centers to getting businesses and commercial users turned on and hooked up with their Internet service providers.
The viNGN broadband network will be territorywide and was created with the goal of getting more residents on the information super highway with faster speeds and more reliable access. During Friday’s meeting, officials said that most of the aerial and underground backbone has been completed, with a majority of the fiber access points hooked up (or close to completion) to anchor institutions that now need to connect to an ISP in order to go “live.”
"The focus now is turning these systems into operations," viNGN Chief Executive Officer Lawrence Kpufer said Friday. "Most of the anchor institutions are in, but we now have to be turning them over. They now have to begin contacting their ISP and start getting service, but we’ve been a little slow in getting to that point – in some cases, for example, there’s additional testing that has to be done before they can go live."
But Kpufer added that during the first quarter of this year, the community should be seeing a lot of the anchor institutions being turned over and turned on, giving residents access to the new network.
Meanwhile, viNGN has been working on sub-projects – including a street mapping initiative with the Lt. Governor’s Office and the completion of SmartGrid technology with the V.I. Water and Power Authority – that Kpufer said is also on the verge of completion.
WAPA’s SmartGrid will allow the authority to be more responsive to outages with officials being able to check on meters right from the office, while the street mapping project will "give anyone visiting the Virgin Islands the chance to go on their tracking devices and bring up all points within the territory," Kpufer said.
Kpufer added that a few issues have to be clarified but that soon viNGN will be ready to kick in the funding to get the initiatives off the ground.
Officials also said that 20 public computer centers have opened with four more on the way, that viNGN has hired a chief technical officer that has been on board for about a month, and that the University of the Virgin Islands has agreed to begin offering the company’s digital literacy course to students.
The viNGN partnership with BetterWorld/Connectspace.vi is also moving forward, with officials saying Friday that BetterWorld/Connectspace.vi will be rolling out 250 virtual positions that are anticipated to be released shortly and that, once released, the company will be working with the Department of Labor to advertise the jobs for local residents.
The jobs will be with Pizza Hut, and the U.S. Virgin Islands is one of the that the company will be working from, Kpufer said.
ViNGN announced its partnership with BetterWorld/Connectspace.vi last year and advertised 80 new work-at-home jobs available for local residents. The jobs were with the firm Support.com, and viNGN members said they were looking to meet with other companies that could offer similar telecommuting jobs.
