Self-provisioning internet can save districts big on monthly costs. So why haven’t more districts invested in it?
In Evan Marwell’s estimation, anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of the nation’s K-12 school districts have self-provisioned their own fiber networks. In most cases, this CEO of San Francisco-based EducationSuperHighway says these districts opt to self-provision those networks because they can’t get internet access any other way.
“These are primarily rural schools that can’t get anyone else to bring cyber to them,” says Marwell, “and/or that couldn’t get a service provider to build a fiber network for them.”
Marwell says there are two major components that are needed to gain internet access: the access itself (i.e., the type that comes into either the district office or some other signal point within the district) and wide-area network (WAN) that connects that district office to all of the schools.…Read More