“A broadband fiber network dedicated to government and public safety use, can make things happen. In East Tennessee, exploiting the fiber backbone has already saved Blount County’s E-911 Dispatch Center thousands of dollars.” Mike Caffrey,VP, Avero Infrastructure
MARYVILLE, Tenn. (PRWEB) August 03, 2019
Avero Infrastructure, a local technology consulting firm, was selected over regional and national competitors to develop and manage the fiber network built by the electric departments for City of Alcoa and City of Maryville. The inter-governmental agency was named MACnet after the networks’ primary sponsors: Maryville, Alcoa, and Blount County. MACnet is the latest in a line of interlocal agreements between the governing bodies seeking to provide efficient services at a reasonable cost.
Smart City initiatives require a lot of data. And a fast, secure broadband ring managed by an agency like MACnet is becoming a more common way to deliver it. Over the last 20 years, 95 counties in Tennessee, invested in installing thousands of miles of optical fiber – much of it still unused. Local utilities and agencies, like TVA, took the opportunity to fund optical fiber wherever it extended electrical power. That investment is about to pay off.
“This is a huge win for us,” said Avero CEO Abhijit “AV” Verekar. “We specialize in helping small governments implement Smart City tech. MACnet is a natural extension of what we are good at.”
Over the last 18 months, Avero’s teams have been working hard in Blount County (TN) to maintain and extend the existing optical fiber network, primarily for Maryville’s utilities. During that time, Avero engineers removed single points of failure within the wide area network (WAN) and improved utilization with much faster speeds. Avero Infrastructure has earned high praise for solving tech problems that prevented stability and growth.
More commonly called a “backbone”, MACnet’s optical fiber ring can deliver computing power to any municipality or agency it touches. In other states, larger versions of MACnet have fueled business growth in redevelopment zones and provided free computing to schools located in less affluent neighborhoods. By establishing MACnet and choosing Avero Infrastructure, area leaders have opened the door to Smart City possibilities.