(Editor’s note: The Broadband Report is a regular feature in WRAL TechWire.)

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – How much do you know about MCNC?

MCNC is a technology nonprofit that builds, owns and operates the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN). It’s the organization that makes sure all K-12 schools, community colleges and public universities in North Carolina have high-speed Internet. It’s the organization that makes sure many of the state’s independent colleges and universities as well as leading researchers have the bandwidth they need to be ready for the workforce or to find the next great innovation. It’s the organization that helps connect doctors and public safety officials to efficiently provide services that keep us healthy and safe.

And, it’s probably the organization most didn’t know did all of this on a daily basis – until now.

Discover MCNC is the new place on the organization’s website where you can explore the operational areas and services on NCREN. This space is designed utilizing short video presentations and other downloadable elements so users can quickly and easily learn about the intricate components that make up the core of NCREN.

“This is a one-stop shop where you can discover who MCNC is, what we do and why we do it every day,” said MCNC President and CEO Jean Davis. “We have always been a customer-first company, and this gives our user community in North Carolina a better way to get the most out of their broadband investments on NCREN.”

Discover MCNC delivers elegant content relating to Client Network Engineering, Network Operations Center, Case Studies, MCNC Video Services, Systems Operations, and the latest update on The State of NCREN.

Discover State of NCREN

MCNC has built one of the nation’s most future-proof networks serving education, research, public safety and health care for all of North Carolina. MCNC’s backbone network efficiently and cost-effectively delivers broadband services to community institutions throughout the state as high-speed connectivity continues to evolve into an essential economic asset for every community.

NCREN is engineered to have virtually unlimited capacity to grow with skyrocketing bandwidth demand. For 30 years, a growing number of research, education, non-profit health care, and other community anchor institutions have connected to NCREN to utilize this leading-edge broadband highway, and today it serves the broadband needs of more than 500 of these institutions.

The State of NCREN gives a high-level, technical update on the backbone infrastructure and a summary of network connectivity services as well as what the future holds for the network.

“People connecting through technology can yield great collaborations,” said MCNC Chief Operating Officer Tommy Jacobson. “MCNC remains focused on meeting the needs of our customers by tailoring specific services for NCREN users so they have the most advanced technology available today.”

Discover Customer Service

NCREN is a robust fiber network, but its continued success is only as good as the human beings running it.

Customer service is what drives the success of NCREN, which is operated 24x7x365 by a highly-skilled team at MCNC who is ready to provide the white-glove customer service end users have come to expect for the last three decades. MCNC remains responsive to the immediate and future needs of its constituents, providing agile and responsive services that support and enhance innovation. MCNC addresses the unique needs of each customer by providing cost-effective and scalable applications, tools and services.

Discover MCNC was created based on a customer’s feedback, which further demonstrates MCNC’s unique way of listening to what customers want and need while delivering it in an easily-consumable manner.

Discover Next 30

The modest beginnings of NCREN can be traced back to the mid-eighties when MCNC designed, provisioned and operated a broadcast-quality, two-way interactive, multipoint video and audio network, the first of its kind in the United States.

NCREN will always be a work in progress as any advanced communications network must evolve and adapt as constituents’ needs change. After celebrating the 30th anniversary of NCREN last fall and welcoming Jean Davis as the new president and CEO at the organization’s annual NCREN Community Day celebration, the fitting theme of “The Next 30” for that event seemed to foreshadow what’s to come in 2015 and beyond.

Take a minute to Discover MCNC and the future of networking in North Carolina.