The Telecommunications Act of 1996 expanded the obligation of telecommunications providers to allow discounted services to the nation's schools and libraries. This initiative became known as the e-rate (Education Rate) program, administered by the Schools and Libraries Division of the Universal Service Administrative Company. The e-rate program funds technology discounts to K-12 schools, and amounts nationally to approximately $2.5 billion each year.
All libraries and K-12 schools are eligible for discounts at a minimum of 20 percent and up to a maximum of 90 percent, based on the school’s participation in the National School Lunch Program. Applicants are also required to have a state-approved technology plan before they can receive discounted services through e-rate.
But even with the help of e-rate funds, many schools and libraries struggle to pay for vital telecommunications services. So to help, the N.C. General Assembly in 2007 funded a $12 million initiative to pay the balance (amount not covered by e-rate) of the cost to connect schools. In the 2008 session, legislators stepped up again to grant an additional $10 million.
North Carolina is in the process of upgrading services to Local Education Agencies (LEA) and to each of the associated schools with adequate bandwidth to support their needs. The majority of North Carolina’s schools and LEAs are operating at 100 Mbps but many are connected at speeds far slower than this. The installation will be complete this year with the exception of the schools still under independent contract for this service, and even those will be converted at the end of their next contract.
With funding from the e-rate program, the N.C. General Assembly and Golden LEAF, each school will have resources to participate in programs like Virtual School, Learn and Earn and distance education through interactive video.
This program has greatly enhanced educational capabilities of participating schools by allowing high-speed connections not only to the Internet, but also to state’s computing systems. So to answer our own question – YES – the program seems to be working…
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6 comments:
Do you know and can you tell me what kind of connection North Stokes Highschool has? I live like maybe 200 yards from that school and I know we don't have DSL or cable here.
There's also a library in Danbury (Stokes County) that had a funky setup last time I stopped in. I ran speedtest.net on one of their machines and it kind of looked like some sort of Sprint PCS wireless internet connection because it was high latency, only about 20-40K/s download.
I know they are e-rate funded and I'm wondering why in the world would they use that when they've got Road Runner cable right outside their door, and have had it available for years now.
Hi Paul - thanks for your question, and for reading our blog. The schools in Stokes County are served wireless access by a private local Internet provider called Network Dynamics Inc. The cost to the school systems last year was approximately $272,500 (source: Schools and Libraries Division). Network Dynamics' quoted speed for their service to Stokes County school system is "up to 7 MB symmetrical." Sarah Wood is the IT director for the school system there. The bigger story here is that MCNC connected to the Stokes County school system on Feb. 1, 2008 but the connection (which would be profoundly faster and less expensive than the current private provider) is not in use. It is our experience that the MCNC connection could not be utilized until the contract with Network Dynamics expires.
And although the library in Danbury is e-rate eligible, we do not know if they use e-rate. We’ll check on that.
NDI appears to be a B2B, good for the school, not so good for the rest of us out here. As for the Danbury public library, I've seen e-rate cards inside the library so I'm pretty certain that's where they are getting their funding.
Thanks for the info.
What else do you know about the MCNC connection? It can't be anything other than wireless I would think, since there's no DSL or cable out here and I'd have noticed someone running fiber.
Sorry - we should have been more clear in the last post. MCNC (www.mcnc.org) is essentially state-controlled and deployed fiber for K-20 educational institutions. But again, in this particular case, it is fiber-un-tapped by the school system there, which is kinda shameful.
I guess not every school is hooked up to that network then. I've lived a couple of hundred yards from North Stokes Highschool for 15 years and I can say as a matter of fact that no fiber has ever been run to that school.
It's really too bad that Embarq is being so cheap out of the Danbury exchange. They ran fiber from that exchange to an equipment shed years and years ago, and that shed is less than 3 miles from the school (and even closer to my home.) I think I measured it out to 1.9 miles to my home and maybe another tenth of a mile to the school (all told maybe 9 miles from the exchange itself.)
If they'd ever pony up the cash to install a DSLAM at that site, half this road, the school, and everything between would light up with DSL. Maybe even the entire road with modern DSL technology (the road itself is 3 miles long, in a 'C' shape.)
Check out these crazy photos of some of the stuff they already have out at that site:
This is the main shed. It has air conditioning and is protected by a Halon fire suppression system, and was built before Sprint bought it (and obviously before it spun-off Embarq): http://tinyurl.com/5n7mkx
This shot is directly to the left of the main shed. In the far right you can see a box connected to the main shed which was visible in the first photo. All three of those boxes are new since we've moved here. Although it's been so long since they ran fiber out to that shed that you can't see which box the fiber runs to just by looking at the ground, it's most likely one of the two on the left: http://tinyurl.com/6yucm6
I've seen what DSLAMs look like and I promise you that it's not a space issue, there's plenty of physical room at that site, and they've already got a fiber backhaul to it and have had it for years. For but some reason Embarq just won't cough up the money for a DSLAM. Or even then, since they've got DSL equipment in the Danbury exchange, why not deploy loop extenders?
I know they (Sprint) ran new phone cable down this road already, both mains cable and the telco ran new wire from the nearest box (the tiny pill shaped boxes) right to our house several years ago.
...How much does a DSLAM and loop extender cost anyway? Kind of curious.
We aren't a service provider - so we have little ability to really pinpoint what any of the telcos pay for a DSLAM or loop extender.
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