Maine Attorney Lawyer

Everything about the country, the struggle for small businesses compete with larger, better funded competitors, but in parts of northern and eastern Maine, challenges, but how long and insurmountable, as winter. “People who do not reside in the state of Maine did not recognize, as it is high,” said Terri Jones, director of technical assistance from community development block for the grant program of the State Office of Community Development (OCD) at Augusta.

Your office staff, in contrast, knows that the distances can be ambitious in the country, the northeasternmost state. Mileage and other travel expenses are an important part of the budget for OCD as their personal visits to customers and economic benefits of workers from other branches in the country. And customers themselves of small businesses in remote areas know how they must work hard to overcome the problems, real and perceived, to compete successfully with larger companies, located in downtown.

OCD, with two non-profit economic development organizations and some other public bodies to try to narrow distances electronically. A video-conferencing-based system called ExtraNet was designed for businesses and development aid to reach their targets easy and effective.

The new network is an extension of a vast existing network, built largely on the edge of the University of Maine network of economic ties, the development of regional offices across the state. Both projects were funded in part by the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP) of the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Push-economic support

The extranet project connects two non-profit organizations for the development of Eastern Maine Development Corp. (MCCD) and the Northern Maine Development Commission, with another push and support services to six satellites economic community offices.

The satellite offices, located at the University of Maine three sites, hospitals or other central technology compatible public spaces, the small business sector with the tools they need to ensure competition in major markets. “We want the opportunity to promote economic development by supporting businesses principal contractor market,” said Rick Alexander, government marketing specialist MCCD in Bangor. “Tell us, we have a small supplier on the market, try printed circuit to a company in Boston,” he said. “Local businesses could access the system to market data and send information in both directions.”

Under the expansion, the block grant, marketing and other data, was once only for Eastern Maine staff can be accessed directly by citizens of the visit of a satellite offices. “We look forward to a sophisticated kind of traffic, and we are opening up databases to use in common, both [economically –

Development] multinationals, “said Pierre Thibeault, MCCD project manager.

For example, the user visits a MCCD, Northern Maine and development or satellite office in search of Maine-Access provider system, which is a database of over 2000 companies based on Maine for a specific information such that the number of carriers in the Held by women in the State. One day, Alexander said that such data can be accessed via the Internet.

In the meantime, MCCD and its development partners are mainly the perception to provide more “sophisticated transport”, these Thibeault-specific form of videoconferencing. Under the second TIIAP grant from the State is the adoption of tenders for the video system.

The video is to provide access to every interaction with [headquartered in MCCD] Bangor discuss economic development, do not drive, “said Thibeault.