PORTLAND, Maine, Nov. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- FairPoint Communications was awarded a four-year contract worth more than $16 million to support the needs of the New England Telehealth Consortium (NETC). Under the contract, FairPoint will provide Carrier Ethernet Services to more than 400 health care sites in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. 

"We are extremely pleased and look forward to partnering with the New England Telehealth Consortium," said Jeff Allen, FairPoint's executive vice president sales.  "FairPoint has invested more than $190 million in communication infrastructure and technology to upgrade our state-of-the-art fiber network in northern New England and we will leverage this network to serve the technology needs of the consortium.  This network is designed and built as a data network and is the largest of its kind in the three-state region."

NETC, a three-state consortium of more than 400 healthcare facilities, received a $24.6 million Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Rural Health Care Pilot Program award to bring telemedicine to the region.

NETC received the largest award issued by the FCC under the Rural Health Care Pilot Program. NETC participants will be receiving upgrades and improvements to their broadband capabilities and connections while paying only 15 percent of the initial upfront costs. The network is designed to expand telehealth and telemedicine capabilities of northern New England health care centers and to enhance their capacities for electronic health information exchange.

The network will deliver remote trauma consultation and expansive telemedicine by linking more than 400 primarily rural health care facilities – including hospitals, behavioral health sites, and community health care centers – in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine to urban hospitals and universities throughout northern New England.

"The contract with FairPoint allows NETC to provide a sustainable broadband health care network to greatly improve the capability and efficiency of health care in northern New England," said Jim Rogers, president of ProInfoNet, the firm selected to design and implement the network.  "The network created will help all these institutions – hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare providers, along with academic and research facilities – to share information that will ultimately benefit the patient whether the patient is in Burlington, Vermont; Millinocket, Maine; or Berlin, New Hampshire."

"This network will enable patients, especially in rural areas to receive top quality care through enhanced telemedicine and information sharing," said Brian Thibeau, NETC president.  "The network will provide health care providers with quick and convenient access to the latest research and medical advances, speed the sharing of medical records and provide access for remote medical diagnostics and surgery, dentistry and behavioral health treatment."

FairPoint is able to serve the needs of NETC through its state-of-the-art, fiber-based core network infrastructure that provides customers with superior performance by offering high bandwidth choices that are both economical and reliable. FairPoint's network delivers customers a variety of reliable online services that provide faster ways to communicate and the opportunity to move large data files quickly and more efficiently.

About FairPoint Communications, Inc.

FairPoint Communications, Inc. (NasdaqCM: FRP) is a leading communications provider of broadband Internet access, local and long-distance phone, television and other high-capacity data services to customers in communities across 18 states. Through its fast, reliable fiber network, FairPoint delivers high-quality data and voice networking communications solutions to residential, business and wholesale customers. FairPoint delivers VantagePoint(sm) services through its resilient IP-based network in northern New England. This state-of-the-art fiber network provides carrier Ethernet connections to support the surging bandwidth and performance requirements for cloud-based applications like network storage, disaster recovery, distance learning, medical imaging, video conferencing and CAD/CAM along with traditional voice, VoIP, video and Internet access solutions. Additional information about FairPoint products and services is available at www.FairPoint.com. You can also connect with FairPoint on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/fairpoint) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/myfairpoint).

SOURCE FairPoint Communications