Blacksburg Electronic Village

The Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) was an initiative between Virginia Tech, the Town of Blacksburg, and Bell Atlantic to create a municipal broadband network for Blacksburg residents. BEV was started in 1991 and is no longer accepting new customers.

The BEV initiative brought wired Ethernet connectivity to dorm rooms, off-campus apartments, and local businesses around 1993 via installation of municipal fiber. Off-campus Internet access was achieved through a combination of fiber and T1 circuits advertised as "100 times faster than dial-up". Bell Atlantic, the local telephone company at the time, is known to have installed at least the last mile equipment. For a while, BEV also operated a number of online services, including gopher and Usenet. BEV was extremely successful, as 87% of Blacksburg residents used the Internet regularly by the late 1990s.

By 1995, BEV had eliminated its modem pool service and transitioned all of its customers to private sector ISPs. In 1998, BEV discontinued its residential Ethernet service and sold its lines to the private sector. It is suspected that NTC took over the Ethernet in apartment complexes. BEV and the Town of Blacksburg are now co-sponsoring a Broadband 2015 initiative to get high-speed gigabit connectivity throughout Blacksburg.

Apartments that had BEV Ethernet

This list is current as of 2002, as the page is no longer available:

• Cedarfield
• The Chase
• The Village
• Foxridge
• Ivy Gardens
• Jefferson Apartments
• Tech Terrace
• Pheasant Run
• Roanoke street / Brendon
• University Terrace
• Collegiate Suites / Hunter's Ridge
• Pointe West Management/Pointe West Commons
• Knollwood
• Price/Williams Apartments

1995-1997 Network Topology

Links

1. http://web.archive.org/web/20011224203705/http://www.bev.net/about/history.php
2. http://web.archive.org/web/20021019160040/http://www.bev.net/project/technotes/T1Config.html
3. http://web.archive.org/web/20011211142935/http://www.bev.net/news/
4. http://web.archive.org/web/20020102104111/http://www.bev.net/project/technotes/Info.mgmt.html
5. http://broadband2015.bev.net/