Stillwater enters high-speed big league

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Dec 10, 1998 by Gregory Potts Journal Record Staff Reporter

Stillwater may be a little city, but with the installation of a $2.7 million fiber-optic telecommunications network, it hopes to technologically leapfrog every other city in the United States.

Chickasaw Telecommunications Services claims it is installing in Stillwater the nation's fastest metropolitan area network.

Chickasaw is spending $2 million on the project. The city of Stillwater is investing another $600,000 and Stillwater Public Schools is chipping in the remaining $100,000. The project is the culmination of a three-year effort by an alliance of local government and schools, the Stillwater Medical Center, the Oklahoma Department of Vocational-Technical Education, area businesses and Oklahoma City-based Chickasaw. A ceremonial groundbreaking was held Wednesday at Stillwater Junior High School. Mayor Mike Henson granted that he didn't understand all technical aspects of the network, but he recognized its significance. "The technical stuff was over my head, but not the significance of having the bandwidth to meet the communication needs of our growing technology businesses in Stillwater," he said. "By making new technologies available throughout our community, we are able to improve the quality of life. We can offer our students new opportunities to learn, our local employers more efficient ways to do business, local, county, and state government better ways to serve the community and state-of-the-art health care delivery to our residents." The network will provide Stillwater residents, schools, local government offices, hospital and local businesses with access to high-speed data, Internet and networking services, video services, traditional local telephone service, and a number of digital telecommunications services previously unavailable in the city. In addition, Chickasaw will use the lines to service its local phone customers. At present, Chickasaw serves those customers through a resell agreement with Southwestern Bell -- its biggest competitor. City Manager Carl Weinaug hopes the city's infrastructure upgrade will help both retain and attract business to the city. "We expect to get a return on our investment quickly," he said. But Stillwater is already more of a high-tech city than most realize, according to Weinaug. Stillwater is home to two high-tech firms -- Teubner and Associates and TMS/Sequoia. In addition, earlier this year the city was named one of the nation's 100 most wired cities by Yahoo! One of the reasons for this designation, he said, is the level of information made available to its 40,000 citizens by the municipal government at its Web page (www.stillwater.org). In addition, he said the college town has a high number of computer users per capita. Chickasaw Telecom, one of the largest competitive local phone service providers in the state, was chosen to operate Stillwater's network through a competitive bid process. Founded in 1909, the company is part of the Chickasaw Family of companies.