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NORTHEAST FLORIDA � A $200 million project known as a NAP, or network access point, which is expected to transform the region's technology sector, will break ground next month."We'd like to have a little Christmas present for the people of Jacksonville," said Park Beeler, president of Trinity Partners. The Baymeadows company is developing the 160,000-square-foot, two-story destination point for a fiber optic cable that connects in the Atlantic Ocean to a cable hooking up New York and England.The project is part of the Jacksonville International Technology Center, a 550-acre site west of I-95 and southeast of Pecan Park Road.The high-powered direct link allows high-speed, high-bandwidth data transmissions to the global telecom network. That's the network on which the Internet and all electronic data runs. Think of the existing telecom grid as a congested system of interstate highways and the Jacksonville NAP as the hub to an alternate highway to alleviate traffic. The six existing U.S. NAPs do not connect directly to each other. The Jacksonville NAP would be the first to seamlessly connect with the other NAPs.
NY tech company may set up NAP in Jacksonville Premium content from Jacksonville Business Journal by Matt Coleman, Staff Writer Date: Friday, April 15, 2011, 6:00am EDT - Last Modified: Friday, April 15, 2011, 8:00am EDT Related:TechnologyNORTHEAST FLORIDA — A national technology company’s plans to bring a long-haul optical fiber route to Jacksonville could help shape Northeast Florida into a major telecommunications and cloud computing hub for the Southeast.Allied Fiber LLC, a New York-based firm specializing in the leasing and sale of unused optical fiber for telecommunications traffic, so-called “dark fiber,” has identified Jacksonville as a potential location for a Network Access Point, a public facility used by multiple Internet service providers.
That story is well over a year old ... is this thing still going to happen? Any new news?
“There needs to be a secondary place like Jacksonville,” Newby said. “Jacksonville will be a new dot on the interconnected map when we decide on a location for a new NAP in late 2012 or early 2013. Savannah [Ga.] doesn’t have it, and no one else in the region has it. The city will get the cream of the crop from a global business perspective.”There aren’t any comparable access points with access to Latin America in Northeast Florida. There was talk of bringing a $65 million Internet hub to Jacksonville’s Northside in 2001, but the plans fizzled.
Miami is home to the Network Access Point of the Americas, a massive facility that links to a series of submarine cables that handle telecommunications switching for Central America, South America and the Caribbean.
But Newby said Miami has become a very aggregated bottleneck, leaving room for a city with a unique access to the rest of the country such as Jacksonville to share in some of the tech spoils.“There needs to be a secondary place like Jacksonville,”
"Savannah [Ga.] doesn’t have it, and no one else in the region has it. The city will get the cream of the crop from a global business perspective.”
Why would anyone not care about this?
Why would anyone not care about this? The proposed center in 2001 was projected to create nearly 10,000 permanent jobs in the region. And generate over 14 mil. in property tax revenues.
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