North Dakota: Connectivity and cooperation

North Dakota has in place a telecommunications infrastructure that is advanced and active, given the state's rural nature and large pockets of low population communities. The state is criss‐crossed by fiber‐optic cables that link the majority of telephone central offices to each other and connect clusters of high schools with interactive video networking. Public television stations are available in most communities of the state. State government is among the leaders in the state in the rapid deployment of frame relay services. The frame relay network represents the newest generation of data communication facilities in North Dakota, replacing a statewide network of dedicated leased data circuits and X.25 packet switches. The frame relay system provides each user group on the network with a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for data communications, which is transparent to other users on the network.