Marconi helps bring broadband to rural U.S.

Marconi has agreed to supply eight digital microwave towers to provide last-mile connectivity to the users of the broadband network in Allegany County, Md. The county's Allconet project has been trying to bring the benefits of broadband communications to its residents and businesses.

The Internet traffic from the towers will be aggregated onto Marconi's routing and switching equipment, and connected to the company's multiservice access system, which provides the high-speed optical backbone for the network. Allconet also has agreements with local and regional ISPs to offload traffic for transport across the public Internet.

--Kelly Carroll, Staff Writer