Metronet is moving into operation

The Metronet has passed an important milestone.

The Metronet system uses fiber optic cables to link together seven Decorah organizations, including the City of Decorah, Decorah Schools and Winneshiek County.

City/county IT official Chopper Albert says the city and county computer systems now are using high speed Internet access through the Metronet.  On Wednesday the Decorah Public Library is expected to get high speed fiber optic Internet access.  Winneshiek Medical Center will get the service through Metronet soon and the Decorah School District is expected to join in during June.

The fiber optic network links together the City of Decorah, Decorah Community Schools, Luther College, Winneshiek County, Winneshiek Medical Center and Upper Explorerland Regional Planning Commission. Each anchor member contributed $75,000 over three years to the program.  The remaining funds came from a $520,000 Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grant from the federal government.

Albert says the next step for Metronet is to begin voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service to lower the telephone costs of participating organizations and improve quality.  Metronet will also be used for disaster recovery, off-site storage and backup of data and centralized inter-connectivity of infrastructure for sharing of services and equipment.