MARQUETTE, Mich.—Northern Michigan University received the 2011 ACUTA Award for Institutional Excellence in Information Communications Technology among mid-size institutions for its WiMAX network.

ACUTA is the association for information communications technology professionals in higher education. Its goal is to “recognize vision and technological leadership in the creative use of information communications technology to support teaching, research, decision-making and service delivery.”

The crystal award was presented at the ACUTA awards luncheon during the recent 40th Annual Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Fla.

Northern is the only university in the country to operate its own WiMAX network. This fourth-generation (4G) technology is capable of transferring data, voice and video at distances far beyond what is available with traditional Wi-Fi. NMU partnered with technology leaders Intel, Lenovo, Motorola and Cisco to launch the network in August 2009. The coverage area has since expanded to roughly 40 square miles, giving students and faculty who live in Marquette and surrounding communities remote access to the NMU network.