White House Author

Joe Freddoso became President and CEO of MCNC on July 1, 2007. Prior to joining MCNC, Freddoso spent 7 years with Cisco Systems, Inc. and 15 years as an organizer of Olympic style events around the globe. In his role at MCNC, Freddoso leads the independent, non-profit corporation in its mission to provide advanced Intranet and Internet networking services to Community Anchor Institutions in North Carolina. MCNC accomplishes this mission by operating the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN), a high speed optical backbone, covering the state, that serves the Intranet and Internet connectivity needs of all 17 institutions of the University of North Carolina System, all 58 North Carolina Community Colleges, all 115 K-12 public school districts as well as a growing number of K12 charter and private schools, the majority of the state’s private colleges and universities, several non-profit and public health care facilities, a number of research institutions. NCREN also serves as the Internet gateway network for all state employees. MCNC currently is working on a $144 million expansion of NCREN that will be completed by summer 2013. This initiative, funded by $104 Million in Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) Grants from the US Department of Commerce and $40 Million in private matching funds, will scale NCREN to meet the future broadband infrastructure needs of its current and future Community Anchor Institution Connectors. These institutions are doubling their need for bandwidth every 3 years.