Business View Caribbean - December 2015 61
ers and to promote local economic growth, innovation,
and global competitiveness. “We are currently operat-
ing and currently servicing the needs of the U.S. Vir-
gin Islands and have the capability of servicing needs
throughout the Caribbean and the world. We already
have what the goal is for many municipalities – a very
robust system.”
viGNG was primarily funded from a quartet of grants
from the federal government’s Commerce Depart-
ment’s National Telecommunications Information
Administration’s (NTIA) Broadband Technology Oppor-
tunities Program (BTOP), whose main purpose is to
encourage the implementation and improvement of
the broadband capacity in the United States and its
territories. “The Virgin Islands applied for all four BTOP
grants that were available,” reports Coverdale, “and
received all four in order to establish viNGN.”
Coverdale is a former Elections System Technology Co-
ordinator and IT professor at the University of the Vir-
gin Islands and has been at the helm of viNGN since
early this year. She admits that getting all four grants
for which it applied is a fairly unique occurrence – one
that was largely due to the presence of Dr. Peter Schul-
tz, one of the co-inventors of fiber optic technology who
just happens to live on St. Thomas. “He was extremely
instrumental in guiding the grant writing process, and
obtaining the grants for the territory,” she says. “He
now serves as a member of our Board of Directors.”
The specific grants which viNGN received include
the following: the State Broadband Data Develop-
ment (SBDD) grant for performing mapping activities,
as well as planning and evaluating the jurisdiction’s
broadband needs, availability, and the quality of what
is available; the Comprehensive Community Infrastruc-
ture (CCI) grant for the deployment of a high-speed
fiber network to the islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix,
and St. John, creating a territory-wide, middle mile
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Virgin Island Next Generation Network
WHAT:
A public corporation that provides high-
speed, 100 percent fiber-optic broadband servic-
es to the U.S. Virgin Islands
WHERE:
St. Thomas and St. Croix, U.S. V.I.
WEBSITE
:
