Imagine what our system of roads and highways would look like and how they would function today if major trucking and transportation companies owned and controlled them, including the decision about which areas would be served by roads and which areas would not be served?

How about airports? What if each airline owned its own airport and none of the other airlines could fly in or out of that airport?

It simply would not work well without access for everyone.

Now, imagine your Internet. Today’s Internet services are much like limited access highways and airports. Think of what our region could accomplish if everyone had high speed access through open access networks in North Mississippi?

Open access networks, by definition, are created and operated to maximize availability, cost efficiency, and sharing by companies and entities that provide Internet services and information to the public. From its inception, MEGAPOP has embraced and incorporated this concept into the network infrastructure that it has fielded for Mississippi.

Plain and Simple – Open access networks own the infrastructure and lease capacity to any and all providers who want to sell their products and services over the network. This in return levels the playing field for all service providers to compete giving the consumer better choices with more capacity at lower prices.

Today, major telecommunications and content providers own their proprietary network infrastructure, which is often based on older copper cabling technology and is generally available only in larger towns and cities. There has been traditional reluctance by the carriers to extend these higher-speed networks into more rural areas simply because the profit margins are not deemed sufficient to warrant it. This leaves many Mississippians with no real chance for broadband connectivity, limiting their opportunity to benefit from the services and content which many citizens and companies now consider necessities.

MEGAPOP networks already form an extensible platform (or foundation) for a wholesale “open access” fiber transport infrastructure across which competing retail service and content providers serve their consumers.