The University of Wisconsin lashed out last week at a state proposal that would merge the state’s two main digital networks with a private “vendor,” much like Charter Communications or SBC.

The protest prompted Gov. Jim Doyle to select a panel of eight state and university officials to develop a network solution to meet the educational needs of statewide academic institutions, including UW.

The appointed panel held a meeting at a packed Pyle Center conference room for academic and state government officials to discuss concerns and suggestions for a new network Friday.

The growing divide between WiscNet, the state government and education data provider, and BadgerNet, a video conferencing network used in both K-12 and university classrooms statewide, has shown growing pains too, Ed Meachen, UW System chief information officer said. He said a community of educators that took 10 years to build would be sacrificed if the networks were leant to vendors.

“We felt we needed to be the managers and governors of our network,” Meachen said.

According to Bob Steussy, director of the bureau of infrastructure and networks, Gov. Doyle urged the panel to move quickly to resolve issues between the state and the university. But a statewide fiber optic “backbone” that would connect UW with academic institutions, including K-12 schools, technical colleges and private universities, is high on the governor’s agenda for the new network.

“Dark fiber,” a fiber optic that is installed but not connected to telecommunications equipment and not controlled by the phone company, is the type of directly managed technology that UW officials suggested to the crowd Friday.

Annie Stunden, chief information officer at UW’s division of information technology, said UW students will not “see anything different” when they compute with an upgraded network, but UW researchers will notice a major difference.

“What we need to do at Madison is get higher speed connections to national research infrastructure,” Stunden said.

She stressed research’s significance and said UW would not want to call Charter Communications to help a faculty member network with a researcher at Berkeley.

The strongest voices in the meeting came from the crowd’s K-12 members.

“The network is imploding while computing is exploding,” one K-12 official said.

The panel did not have all of the answers to concerns raised during the three-hour meeting. Panel members even joked about inviting officials in the crowd to come up and fill empty seats.

“We’re only in the formulation stage,” Stunden said. “You’re seeing the itches we haven’t stopped scratching yet.”

Stunden said the panel members will have to figure out how to come together, their biggest challenge being, “getting all of the people in the room to work together too.” She said the governor has given the panel up to six months to come up with the network solution, and “we don’t dare let it go any longer than that,” she said.

Though several officials voiced concern about regional disparities in rural parts of the state, and who will control the new network, Matt Miszewski, chief administration officer for the state said he has a vision of a network that meets the needs of all of the users in Wisconsin.

“It’s everybody including the UW,” he said.