"Say you're a biomedical research firm looking around the country. All other things being equal, you'd move to the place with the high-speed connectivity -- not here," says UNM Director of Information Technology Lou Sullo.

UNM and its partners in New Mexico have already attracted considerable help along the way. About six months ago, Time Warner Telecom offered to turn over to the university a Downtown fiber hub facility with connections to Qwest, MCI and Sprint fiberoptic systems. St. George says engineers have estimated the cost of building a similar, standalone facility at about $1 million.

Furthermore, Qwest, one of the major stakeholders in Internet 2, has offered a free connection from the proposed gigaPOP to the Denver core node until 2006. Such a connection would typically cost about $1 million to $3 million a year, St. George says.

"It bespeaks the amount of interest we have in the community," says Qwest New Mexico President John Badal. "This could enhance New Mexico's chance of becoming a research hub."

That leaves about $1 million needed to buy the equipment to build the gigaPOP, Sullo says. UNM and representatives from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Techology and New Mexico State University are working with the state to secure that money.

"We're working with the New Mexico Economic Development Department to figure out where in the maze of state government we might look for that funding," St. George says.

St. George says he hopes the system will be up and running by the middle of next year.

He says he expects most of the state's colleges and universities to join, as well as its national laboratories.