With the new ventures taking off at the Mid-Delta Regional Airport such as Greenville Kearns Aerospace Maintenance, Inc, (GKAM), the enhancement of network infrastructure and internet access is imperative.
For this reason, airport director Sam Washington requested the Greenville City Council’s approval of updating network lines and internet access to Airport Hangar 450 at their last regular meeting.
He recommended AT&T be selected as the service provider as the airport looks to upgrade all of its access points, both the terminal and fixed-based operator, in pursuit of a successful Hangar 450 project.
“We want to try and get the whole airport on the same level so that once the project gets going, if we have an outage in any one place, we can just go to another location and we’ll be able to keep going until we get that problem solved,” Washington explained.
C Spire quoted a price of $1,115 per month for the service while AT&T quoted a price of $1,054 per month for 36 months.
Given that C Spire has a 96-month contract with the State of Mississippi, the City would be “free to sign up” if it so chose, Washington pointed out.
However, AT&T’s installation would take no more than 45 days whereas C Spire would take anywhere from 90 to 120 days due to AT&T’s infrastructure already being in place.
“That’s why they can do it so much faster,” Washington noted.
In addition to a much quicker installation time, AT&T’s quote is $61 cheaper per month.
For both the terminal and the FBO, the airport would incur a service fee of roughly $25,000 per year until the line is run to the other businesses utilizing it.
“This is to get the service run through the building and to a router in the building. For the terminal we’re already there, but what this will do is run the service to each hangar,” Washington further illustrated.
The city’s IT director, Keith Gann, affirmed the airport’s need for updated lines and connectivity.
“This is a desperately needed upgrade for the airport,” said Gann, noting the airport is running on a 10 megabyte circuit. “Even with the circuit from AT&T, it’s fairly hard to even do the business that we currently do out there.”
Washington noted, “In terms of data, it’s an overload in technology.”
An upgrade to 1 gig, he said, would serve the airport for a long time.
“The terminal is something that 100% needs to be done, there is no question about that,” Gann added.
As it pertains to the hangars, it is Gann’s understanding that once everything is hooked up at the airport terminal and the FBO, the infrastructure would allow anyone occupying and utilizing a hangar to access the service at their own expense.
As of right now, the FBO has its own AT&T connection.
Washington reiterated the idea is essentially to get every operation at the airport up to the same speed because of the close working relationship each will have.
“So, if we have a problem anywhere, we should be able to port off of each other to help keep things going,” he said.
The council voted to table the matter until the next meeting in order to allow Washington to make further inquiry regarding the proposed contracts.
