Insights

Welcome to the new year! I hope it is one that offers hope, goodwill, and kindness to all. As 2025 came to an end, I got to represent NETC at an event celebrating our managing agent, Jim Rogers and his company ProInfoNet, reaching the milestone of 30 years in business. Jim began ProInfoNet in December 1995 in his home. His vision, drive, determination, and hard work built a very successful and valuable contributor to our region and country, providing solid consulting in the planning, design, and implementation of telecommunications services. His work has positively impacted a wide variety of organizations across Maine, New England, and the country! NETC extends a hearty congratulations and happy 30^th anniversary to Jim and his team.

In part, his success is also NETC’s success. Jim and his team have enabled NETC to become one the largest and most successful consortia in the country, working with over 1,400 healthcare sites in New England. With vision, drive, and determination, his success has been our success!

As we embark on a new year, NETC can also reflect on its success. NETC is entering its 19^th year of working for 100s and 100s of non-profit healthcare providers (HCPs) across New England to obtain Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Healthcare Connect Fund (HCF) subsidies supporting telecommunications. It has been a remarkable journey from humble beginnings in 2007 as part of the FCC’s innovative Rural Health Care Pilot Program (RHCPP). With a $24.6 million award from the RHCPP to cover 85% of the cost, we embarked on planning, designing, and building a private, quality of service, redundant network of several hundred HCPs in New England, predominately Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It was a challenging five years until November 2012 when the first fiber optic circuit connected a healthcare provider in Bangor to NETC’s newly equipped and operational Network Operations Center (NOC). Following that first circuit, the network continued to be built out over the next three years. Today, it serves over 325 HCPs in New England. Through FCC fiscal year 2024 (July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025), NETC has secured over $60.5 million in HCF subsidy for the network and its participating HCPs!

Under the management of ProInfoNet, the NETC NOC has achieved a 99.982% circuit uptime since 2015! Today, our network boasts a total installed site bandwidth of 106.64 Gbps! Over that same period of time, internet use has increased by over 2,000%!

In addition to the private network, NETC also works with 1,416 HCPs throughout New England to obtain subsidy for Off-Net circuits. For those HCPs, HCF funding is subsidizing over 4,500 circuits representing over 7.0 Tbps total bandwidth. Through FY 24, over $60.5 million of subsidy has been secured for those circuits. It is anticipated that an additional 300+ sites will obtain subsidy over the next year or so.

And now NETC is looking forward. Design and beta testing are well underway on NETC’s NextGen private network. Later this year, initial deployment of the new technology is expected to begin and continue into 2027. Through ProInfoNet, NETC is working to adopt the latest SD-WAN technology to future proof the network while assuring scalability and compatibility with legacy topologies.

There is much more I could report, but I am mindful of your time. My thanks to all of you who are a part of the NETC community. We appreciate your continued support, and we look forward to continued success!