Editor’s note: This article is a part of The Daily Illini’s Semester in Review issue. Regular publication will resume Friday, Jan. 11.

During the past semester, some Champaign, Urbana and Savoy residents have been cruising along the web at speeds unrivaled by most communities in the nation. The problem? “Some” isn’t the goal of the Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband project, and it’s unclear when some becomes “all”, or at least “most”.

The souped-up speed is the result of the Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband project, or UC2B, comprised of $30 million of fiber optic rings laid beneath the streets of Champaign County. The construction to lay the infrastructure of the project, seven massive fiber optic rings, was completed during the summer, and residents began sign up starting in May.

UC2B has been a long time coming, and local efforts to bring fiber-based internet access to the area go back all the way to 1997, when then local internet business owner Mike Smeltzer proposed a similar project. Now CITES director of networking and acting director of physical infrastructure, Smeltzer has been able to see his 15-year-old pipe dream finally bear fruit.

“We’re finally doing it,” he said in an interview in late August. “Right now, we can say to a family that they’ll have a better connection from their child’s bedroom to the school district’s resources than they would even have from the classroom.”

Smeltzer said Sunday that about 600 locations are currently running on UC2B fiber, with another 15 to 18 new installations daily, so long as snowfall remains minimal.

Federal stimulus money as well as state funding brought UC2B to reality, and the project represents the result of broad collaboration between the cities of Champaign and Urbana, the University and the US Ignite project, which builds applications that leverage the incredible speed of fiber-optic connections.

But UC2B has a somewhat limited scope and has been offered to only the areas most chronically underserved by existing Internet infrastructure. These areas were determined through a 2009 survey conducted by a group of students, faculty and staff in the Graduate School of Library Science. After dividing Champaign-Urbana (as well as parts of Savoy) into census blocks, the group found that 11 blocks with less than 41 percent of residents with high-speed internet, qualifying as “underserved” according to federal guidelines.

As the school year began, canvassers were already moving through the 11 blocks, knocking on doors and signing up residents, businesses, as well as powerful connections to community organizations like schools and hospitals.

However, there are a number of unanswered questions. First, while the canvassers have managed to sign up 1,300 customers since they began in May, the federal grant could accommodate as many as 2,500 residents and 200 community organizations. That money will be out of reach come January, when the grant expires.

The real issue is how to expand UC2B’s coverage after the money runs out as well as leveraging the current infrastructure into attracting businesses and further development in web applications in the area.

Tens of millions of dollars will be needed to expand UC2B to cover all of Champaign-Urbana, including the University, but progress has been a mixed bag. Initial negotiations with a private firm, Gigabit Squared, seemed promising, but there has be no word on whether this public-private cooperation will produce results.

Danny can be reached at [email protected]