KAMLOOPS – Thompson Rivers University (TRU) and community leaders in education, research and business kicked off the fall semester today with the launch of accelerated, super high-performance connectivity for research and higher education communications through BCNET‘s Kamloops transit exchange.
The BCNET connection, up to 10,000 times faster than the commercial Internet, will expand teaching, scholarly activity and research opportunities without being limited by network capability, enabling partnerships and collaborations using state-of-the-art applications from networks across Canada and around the world.
TRU’s capacity to produce top-level research will be significantly enhanced by BCNET connectivity, said TRU President and Vice-Chancellor Roger Barnsley, as will the university’s teaching and training capacity.
“Connecting to BCNET will mean superb network connectivity for staff and students, allowing the university to engage students both in the classroom and distant locations, and to increase access to course, library and research materials as well as collaborative research projects, allowing the highest quality of student engagement possible,” he said, adding that TRU recently joined a network of other institutions that will share their resources and experiment with using remote nodes to manipulate laboratory equipment in labs around the continent, allowing chemistry students in distant areas to gain “virtual” experience using specialized equipment that is not readily accessible in their community.
On the research side, Barnsley noted, “Our population health researchers will now have much more effective access to the databases they use and our collaborators in drinking water quality research will now have ‘real time’ access to monitoring data that are linked to several ongoing experiments.”
“Kamloops has always been an important hub, and the Internet heralds a new trade route for commerce, redefining how we do business. Through the Kamloops Community Network, our city has built an on-ramp to the information highway, providing businesses and citizens with low-cost, high-speed communications via a publicly owned and operated utility,” said Kamloops Mayor Terry Lake.
Michael Hrybyk, BCNET President and CEO, spoke of the value of networks, communities and sharing data. “Staying connected to each other and to the world is very important,” he said. “Research and teaching require bits of data-it can be tens of terabits, or 10 trillion bits. This data is only good if it is shared with someone; therefore, the value of networks is our ability to share data among faculty and staff and the local and global research and education communities.”
The Kamloops transit exchange, part of the BCNET 2010 Project launched in 2005 with capital funding of $3.15M from British Columbia’s Ministry of Advanced Education, uses high capacity, “super” broadband links to connect universities, institutes and communities across the province, and is linked to similar networks across Canada and throughout Europe and the Pacific Rim
For more information, please contact:
Tamara Klein (Manager, BCNET Communications & Client Services)
Phone: 604-268-7865; Cell: 604-505-8455 or by email.
Brian Mackay (Associate Vice President, TRU IT Services)
Phone: 250-828-5326 or by email.
Jeff Putnam (CEO, Venture Kamloops)
Phone: 250-828-6818 or by
