Hudson Valley Community College (HVCC), the second-largest institution of higher learning in the Capital Region of New York State, has selected FirstLight Fiber’s Internet and Ethernet Private Line (EPL) services to support its growing bandwidth needs.
FirstLight provides Internet connectivity to HVCC’s 120-acre main campus, while its Ethernet service provides dedicated, point-to-point, scalable connectivity from two of the college’s satellite campuses and two Educational Opportunity Centers (EOC) campuses back to the main campus.
Hudson Valley Community College first tapped FirstLight in 2013, when FirstLight installed a dedicated fiber link between the HVCC and University at Albany college campuses, allowing the schools to share data center services.
“In response to the increasing and redundant Internet demands and future needs of the college, it was crucial for us to find a service provider who could offer exceptional products as well as a higher level of service from a quality and responsiveness perspective,” said Sarah Garrand, interim CIO for HVCC. “FirstLight met all of those requirements, including providing the campus with a redundant Internet solution. The infrastructure, the quality and the speed we are observing now is vastly improved in comparison to our previous connection. The whole experience with FirstLight has been a very positive one, and I would recommend their services to other institutions.”
HVCC serves more than 12,000 students each semester, and employs more than 650 full- and part-time faculty members. The institution offers more than 75 degree and certificate programs through its four schools: Business; engineering & industrial technologies; health sciences; and liberal arts and sciences.
“Serving the communications needs of an institution as highly accredited as Hudson Valley Community College is a great privilege for FirstLight and is consistent with our mission to improve connectivity options for businesses and enhance the learning environments of educational institutions throughout the Capital Region and Northern New England,” said Kurt Van Wagenen, president and CEO of FirstLight.
