The main street business districts of Chatham, Danville, and Gretna currently boast Internet "hotzones" - specific areas that provide free access to the Internet using wireless technology. This cutting-edge service is due in part to the capabilities provided to the area through eDan. The next time you are in dowtown Chatham, Danville, or Gretna, turn on your laptop or PDA and cruise the Internet for free using Southside Wireless.

Click here to watch the official Southside Wireless media announcement.

Technology

eDan Internet Infrastructure

eDan is the next generation Internet infrastructure that is currently deployed in the Dan River Region. It is capable of transmitting information at high speeds - up to a billion bits per second and uses optical fiber and wireless technologies. The infrastructure is designed to be "open access" which means that any provider of Internet or application services can choose to use this infrastructure. Service providers do not have to incur the considerable expense of installing their own high speed networks to provide their most advanced services to businesses, organizations and citizens in the Dan River Region.

eDan as a Tool for Economic Growth

The national, and to an increasing extent global, economy is rapidly moving toward being "knowledge-based" with decreasing reliance on manufacturing and agriculture. The "products" of a knowledge-based economy are primarily intellectual, rather than physical products, and are dependent on electronic highways, rather than Interstates or waterways, to reach their markets. Thus, to be a player in the emerging economy, the Dan River Region must rely on its highly capable electronic communications infrastructure.

Although the eDan infrastructure is attractive to existing large businesses in the Dan River Region, it offers incredible potential to other important sources of economic growth. eDan enables a "producer network," meaning that individuals in our community no longer need to think of themselves as primarily consumers of products and services available through a communications network, but can be empowered as producers of very rich multimedia products and services that they can offer to the network. In a national economy that is producing most new jobs in 1-25 person organizations, e-entrepreneurs and outsourced e-services providers can live in the Dan River Region and serve a distant market. Additionally, the bandwidth, or traffic carrying capacity, of eDan will be critical to research activities that Virginia Tech is looking to bring to the Dan River Region.