TASSCC Honors LEARN with 2007 Higher Education Excellence Award for Innovative Use of Technology

August 27, 2007

The Lonestar Education And Research Network (LEARN),  a cooperative effort of 33 institutions of higher education in Texas that includes The University of Texas at Austin, has been awarded the 2007 Excellence Award from the Texas Association of State Systems for Computing and Communications (TASSCC).

LEARN provides high-speed connectivity between member institutions and to research networks nationally. The organization was honored for offering a cost-effective way of supplying essentially unlimited bandwidth availability for higher education institutions in Texas. By planning for and installing fiber-optic cable that exceeds current demand, LEARN is able to provide long-term leases of dark or unlit fiber at a fixed cost. The use of dark fiber allows for future expansion and network redundancy and limits variable costs for increasing bandwidth to upgrades for optical-electronic equipment.

The University of Texas at Austin was a founding member of LEARN and has provided strong leadership and support of the group’s goal to provide state-of-the-art, cost-effective data communications that enable effective education of students across the state of Texas.

For more information about LEARN, visit http://www.tx-learn.org.