Great read on PennREN, BTOP and NLR's Wendy Huntoon

An excellent narrative in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the Pennsylvania Research and Education Network's (PennREN) journey to securing $99.6 million in BTOP stimulus funding to bring broadband to the most rural parts of the state.

PennREN's proposal was for a broadband network headquartered at 13 anchor facilities and about 50 satellite sites, which would together provide a radius of connectivity through 39 Pennsylvania counties. The successful funding application was orchestrated by Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center director of networking and NLR Vice Chair Wendy Huntoon, who is interviewed in the article.

It's a great read: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10110/1051750-96.stm#ixzz0ldPlzEal

NLR's Glenn Ricart on Internet Evolution Radio

This morning NLR president and CEO Glenn Ricart had a wide-ranging, live audiocast conversation with Internet Evolution editor-in-chief Terry Sweeney on NLR's technology vision and strategy, high-end e-science applications NLR's seeing over its platform, NLR's role in the discussion around national broadband to communities and homes, etc.

Check it out, as well as Glenn's live-chat posts with participants at:
http://www.internetevolution.com/radio.asp?doc_id=187956

White House: Call for student-led innovation, also on R&E nets

A March 25 post on the White House blog by Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Tom Kalil, deputy director for policy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy suggested that promoting student-led innovation on "killer apps" for broadband would help achieve a key component of the recently released National Broadband Plan, the development of broadband applications.

Such an initiative could be led by the private sector and build on investments already made on high-speed research networks such as Internet2 and National LambdaRail, according to the blog.

The authors invite ideas and feedback at broadband@ostp.gov.