A major project to build an 1,100-mile high speed Internet network through Maine is still in its infancy, but took a small step today toward its ambitious goal. Maine Fiber Company gathered with other supporters in Brunswick to announce completion of the first segment of what will become the so-called "Three Ring Binder", connecting communities from Biddeford to Machias to Fort Kent.

With the snip of a big red ribbon, Maine Fiber Company officials celebrated a milestone in a project that's expected to take two years, and tens of millions of dollars to complete. Maine Fiber is the private entity created to oversee construction, maintenance and leasing of the open-access network, which was funded in part by a $25 million dollar federal stimulus grant. As of today, the company has completed a five-mile segment of the network along Route 1 near Brunswick.

"Although we've only completed five miles of fiber thus far, there are hundreds of miles of fiber and eventually 1,100 miles that will be complete and available for our customers, for the residents and the businesses of the state of Maine," says
Maine Fiber CEO Dwight Allison.

Allison says the five-mile section of the Three Ring Binder (outlined on map above) cost about $150,000 dollars to build, and represents just a small fraction of the project's $32 million dollar budget.

"And equally it's only the beginning of the economic development story that will come to Maine," Allison says. "That economic development, I would expect, in addition to our $32 million dollars, would probably be at least another $25 million dollars of network development on the Three Ring Binder, bringing the spending to in excess of $50 million dollars just on the network, not counting what then happens for economic development off of that network."

The very existence of the Three Ring Binder, say its developers, will attract new investment to Maine, due in part to its geographic location in the northeastern U.S.

"Maine is stuck out like a sore thumb, surrounded by Canada and New Hampshire," says Fletcher Kittredge, CEO of Biddeford-based Great Works Internet, or GWI, which was central in putting together Maine's winning federal grant application for the project.

"This network will actually put Maine on the way between Boston and New York and London and Paris. It gives us an opportunity, believe it or not, to change the flow that goes under the sea to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and under the sea again for one leg of that to come into Maine," Kittredge says. "And that will result in potentially a large investment in Maine's telecommunications infrastructure."

But the tangible benefits of the network, say hospital officials in Brunswick, are already being realized. Gale Stoy is Information Technology Manager at Mid Coast Hopsital, where the ribbon cutting was held. She says that as of November 1st, stroke patients in the area will be able to be examined via the Internet by neurologists at Maine Medical Center in Portland.

"And so we will have a cart with a Web cam on it and we'll be able to position that in front of the patient. We'll send down our CT scan, again, using the broadband connectivity that we how have to quickly get that CT scan down there, and then one of their neurologists will get on, view our patient and evaluate."

Stoy says the bandwidth needed by hospitals to quickly send large electronic files, such as CT scans, is much larger than the high speed Internet service that would be offered on a computer at home.

"We're talking about larger bandwidths, but we're also talking about secure fiber networks," says Stoy's husband, John Stoy, who also works for Mid Coast Hospital. John Stoy says the security of the new network is critical for protecting patient information that's being transfered from site to site.

"You and I travel on the Internet every night, and those networks aren't secure, patients' data is not protected. Someone could hack into one of those lines and see patient data," he says. "With the Maine Fiber Network, these are all high speed fiber secure networks that meet the HPPA requirements for patient confidentiality of data and everything else that goes with it."

Maine Fiber Company says that once completed, the dark-fiber network will connect more than 100 Maine communities, 110,000 households, 38 goverment facilities and 600 so-called "anchor community institutions" such as hospitals.

The company says the fiber will be leased to qualified carriers who may then offer access to businesses and consumers in those communities.