Champaign County Network: strategies, successes and obstacles

Champaign County Network, Inc. (CCNet) was formed as a not for profit subsidiary of the Champaign County Chamber of Commerce in 1993. The goal of CCNet is to make Champaign County a prototype fully-integrated community on the information superhighway, with a variety of connectivity solutions fulfilling the information and communication needs of different types of businesses, organizations and individuals. At the onset of the information revolution, a community the size of Champaign County (1990 county population of 173000) was not a likely site for many commercial testbeds for international vendors. However, the community leadership, organization, and determination to connect Champaign County to the global information infrastructure has resulted with both connectivity and vendor contributions. This paper details the objectives of CCNet, and strategies, successes and obstacles associated with each of those objectives