July 21, 2004 South Boston, VA -- Adesta LLC, a multi-discipline infrastructure provider and integrator, yesterday broke ground on the construction of its multi-million dollar Network Operations, Data, and Control Center (NOCC) in the Riverstone Technology Park located in South Boston, Virginia. The NOCC will support the 700-mile Regional Backbone Initiative (RBI) network system, which will provide full connectivity for Southside Virginia. News of the ground breaking comes just after Adesta announced in June that it won a multi-million contract to design and build part of the RBI telecommunications infrastructure.
To complete the network and the NOCC, Adesta (Omaha, NE) will spend millions in capital and operating purchases with local vendors and subcontractors, fill 22 permanent technical jobs, and provide jobs for approximately 100 constructions workers and engineers during network construction and implementation.
The RBI/Roots of Progress Initiative is largely funded by the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission and coordinated by the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative (MBC), a non-profit entity formed to manage the project by deploying broadband services such as high-speed Internet in Southside. The network will link five cities, 20 counties, 56 industrial parks, 700,000 citizens and 19,000 businesses with high-tech telecom services, which will help promote economic development opportunities by attracting technology-based business and industry, providing higher wage jobs and making high-speed Internet access affordable and available in an area where such technology does not exist today.
"The Regional Backbone/Roots of Progress Initiative--which helped bring Adesta to Southside--will not only bring broadband technology to Southside, but will serve as a national model for other regions seeking to better their economic conditions," contends C. David Hudgins, chairman of the board for Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative. "In Virginia, support has been overwhelming, and we know this is only the beginning of Roots of Progress to build a brighter future."
"We believe a professionally designed and managed NOCC will enhance the marketability of the MBC network," adds Adesta president Bob Sommerfeld. "The NOCC will showcase the capabilities of Southside Virginia's open-access fiber-optic network, which is designed to foster a better climate for doing business here. I believe the RBI project will spur economic development in this region, and we are proud to partner with the forward-looking organizations represented here today."
To build a NOCC with state-of-the-art network and services management, round-the-clock staffing, and rigorous security, Adesta will invest over half a million dollars. The Network Center will include a dynamic display wall to help coordinate activities between multiple networks and systems by the NOCC technicians and house offices for key permanent personnel, monitoring consoles, and all the servers and wide/local area network equipment needed to support the functions and services of the Adesta Mid-Atlantic Operation. The NOCC will monitor remote site alarms such as power failure, low battery voltage, high or low temperature, and high humidity. Adesta will also monitor access to corporate buildings where equipment is located, secure rooms, and individual equipment cabinets. Adesta will offer such data services as monitoring, provisioning, storage, and disaster recovery to both government and enterprise customers.
Scheduled for operation in 2005, the NOCC will serve nearly 2 million businesses and 50 million customers.
The 700-mile RBI network is scheduled to be operational by January 2006.