E-Rate Supports Gigabit Internet for Schools & Libraries

By: John Shepler

It’s clear that broadband Internet is a key infrastructure for business, education and personal use. Schools and libraries may have the greatest need of all to access information online. We’re living in a Google, Wikipedia, e-book world and information is going more electronic by the day.

Schools & Libraries are Lagging
What might surprise you is that many elementary schools and libraries area woefully behind the times when it comes to electronic access. They need modern broadband service. Not the Megabit per second standard that was thought fast when we were moving from dial-up modems to always-on high speed Internet. Today’s standards need to be based on what fiber optic connections can provide. Is Gigabit Ethernet too fast… or just about right?

The FCC is now in the just about right camp. The latest round of improvements to the government’s E-Rate program are targeting Internet speeds of at least 100 Mbps per 1,000 students and staff now, moving up to 1,000 Mbps in the longer term. Libraries that serve fewer than 50,000 people should get at least 100 Mbps. Larger libraries, those serving more than 50,000 people need 1 Gbps or higher Internet access speeds. Looking ahead, the FCC wants WAN/Last Mile connectivity to be scalable to 10 Gbps per 1,000 students. You know it won’t be long before that is what we’ll think of as typical.

More Funding for Higher Bandwidths
The amount of funding for E-Rate discounts has been running a $2.4 billion a year. That has been recently increased by $1.5 billon to $3.9 billion per year. A good part of this funding will support high speed Internet access. The rest will be used for infrastructure within the facilities, particularly Wi-Fi access. Wireless vs wired Ethernet connections are particularly important for students and library patrons. Funding will be ended for legacy services such as paging and traditional landline telephones.

How to Qualify for E-Rate Discounts
Any school, school district or library that wants to participate in the E-Rate program needs to submit an application through the program administrator, USAC or the Universal Service Administrative Company. Any carriers, or service providers, that want to offer E-Rate qualified services also need to submit an application. They are then assigned a SPIN or Service Provider Identification Number. Many of the larger carriers have already taken this step and have the ability to install fiber optic broadband Internet or WAN connections at speeds ranging from 10 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps or more.

How Much Are the Savings?
E-Rate is a discounted service price. In other words, if you qualify for E-Rate you’ll pay less for broadband access than commercial entities for the same line speeds. The actual discount that each school or library receives is based on the poverty level of the population they serve and whether the population is considered urban or rural. The actual calculations are based on the percentage of students eligible for the national school lunch program. Discounts then range from as low as 20% to as high as 90%.

The Easy Want to Find E-Rate Broadband
You can do the research yourself by contacting local service providers or searching online for national carriers. However, it’s much easier to use a company that works with many different carriers and knows who has E-Rate capability in your area. There is no cost for this service. It’s available to any interested school or library. It’s also fast and easy to make a no-obligation inquiry. Check for carriers offering E-Rate bandwidth services now.

Military Surplus Telephone Equipment

Here's an idea for dealing with the current business downturn. Let Uncle Sam help you out.

OK, perhaps you don't qualify for any TARP or other government stimulus funding. But there still a way your red, white and blue Uncle can save you money. All you need to do is bid on and win any of the mountains of surplus parts and equipment that the government doesn't want anymore. It's patriotic, it's "green" since you're recycling this unused equipment, and it's often a huge bargain.

When we think of government military surplus, things like jeeps, boots and tents come to mind. Oh, you can still get those if you want them. But the inventory of government surplus now in warehouses nationwide goes far beyond those usual military items. How far? How about high technology parts and equipment like computers and telephone gear?

Let's have a look at some of the items up for bid as of this writing. Would you be interested in a lot of 100 telephones that include some Nortel Network model M3902 phones? How about a pallet or so of telephone wire?

Do you find fiber optic equipment a tad expensive? Would you be interested in a Cisco LightStream 1010 ATM switch? There's one available.

There's test equipment, too. How about a Packeteer PacketWise Technology Packet Shaper 6500 protocol analyzer? Looks like this one cost $19,000 to acquire. I'll be you can get it for a lot less.

On a more mundane level, there are 9 pallets of printers and fax machines from manufactures like HP, Xerox and Lexmark awaiting your perusal. Why just go out and pick up a printer when you can have a truck load of them?

Well, maybe you'd just like a nice video projector. Or 4 pallets of Pentium IV desktop computers. Or some IBM ThinkPad docking stations.

Where did I find all this stuff? It's online at Government Liquidation. This is a site where you can register to bid on official U.S. government surplus equipment and supplies.

They also have a selection of items you can just buy outright. Most of these are clothing, but they did have a couple of types of computer speakers available the last time I looked.

If you've ever enjoyed browsing in local surplus stores, you'll find yourself spending a lot of "coffee break" time looking over the latest offerings online. Just tell the boss that you're researching ways to save the company a bundle and perhaps nobody will look closely enough to see that you are really checking out aircraft parts or inflatable boats. Who knows, you may just stumble across a great deal on a PBX system or some expensive fiber optic routers that you can get for a song.

The Clever D Block Initiative

In the bandwidth feeding frenzy that was the recent 700 MHz spectrum auction, one small bank of frequencies went unsold. Sadly, D Block did not meet its reserve price and remains assigned to the UHF analog TV channels scheduled for shutdown next February. What makes this sad is that of all the new possible applications for the 700 MHz band, D Block was slated for perhaps the most important role of all in an ingenious plan to bootstrap a new nationwide public service network. So clever was this plan that I think it deserves another look. It might just be the blueprint for how to get other things we want in this less than robust economy.

The origin of the D Block idea goes back to the horrific morning of September 11, 2001. As the Twin Towers came crashing down in New York City, we were shocked to learn that the loss of life was exacerbated by an electronic communications fiasco. Firefighters couldn't even coordinate with police officers because their radios operated on different frequencies. What's more, this problem permeates the entire nation. Public safety two-way radio is an ad-hoc service with no national network. That's what D Block is intended to fix. Combining the D Block frequencies with the current public safety frequencies offers the opportunity to coordinate a suite of broadband and narrowband services that all police, fire and rescue units could access.

Seems like such a good idea should have been implemented already. But some six and a half years after 9/11, there is still no nationwide public safety network. Why? Building out a whole new network is an expensive proposition. The cost has been estimated to be some $6 to $7 billion. In the big scheme of things, it seems like this amount of money could be included in our federal budget without causing a noticable bump. But in these times of big deficits and slow economic growth, it's hard to get broad bipartisan support for even a project as worthy as this one.

So here's the clever part. How would you like to get that brand new public safety network for free? Well, at least free to the taxpayers. Before you jump up and say that's impossible, take a look at what the FCC tried to pull off in Auction 73. The A, B, C, and E Block licenses were sold to commercial entities for cash on the barrel head to the tune of $19 billion for the Federal Treasury. But D Block was held back. In order to win a nationwide license for this spectrum, bidders had to commit to creating that nationwide public safety network. Why would they do that? Because in consideration for building the public safety network, the winner would get to share the spectrum for commercial gain.

The 10 MHz D Block and the existing 10 MHz public safety spectrum in the 700 MHz band were paired to create a public/private partnership. The reserve price was set at $1.3 billion and the doors swung open to prospective bidders. Everything sold quickly except, you guessed it, D Block. The lone bid was for about a third of the reserve price. Major carriers wanted nothing to do with the idea. A dejected Federal Communications Commission is now soliciting public comments on how to rebid the shunned D Block.

Alternatives include reapproaching Congress for the funds, perhaps delaying any action to see if a new administration might be warmer to the idea. Or simply forgetting the idea of a national public safety network and selling off D Block for commercial usage. But I say not so quick. There may still be a way to get that new network for "free."

It comes down to a matter of incentives. The fact that the D Block auction failed simply means that the terms and conditions weren't attractive enough in this economic environment. The idea still has merit and it could well be the right answer at the right time. Let's face it, as a nation we're strapped. Between skyrocketing oil prices, plummeting housing prices, a credit crunch and anemic economic growth, a public/private partnership might be the most expeditious way to get things moving. But what incentives will do the trick?

The variables to play with are the reserve price, any lease costs for commercial use of the existing public safety spectrum, public financing of the buildout, preferred tax treatment, and perhaps first crack at any new spectrum that opens up. The idea is to sweeten the pot with incentives that don't result in out of pocket expense to the taxpayers. Public financing wouldn't necessarily cost us anything if it were just a matter of ensuring that the monies are available to loan for such a large project at reasonable market rates.

If this approach still isn't enough to make it happen, then a fallback position would be to keep the partnership but have the public kick in some cash. That's not quite as desirable but it is a way to privatize at least part of the massive effort involved in building and running such a system. Can you think of other ways to make this work? If so, make your voice heard to the FCC during this public comment period.

I'd like to see this very clever plan work out for the public safety network because we certainly can use it. Both 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina taught us that big disasters can come upon us with little or no warning. We need to get prepared for whatever the next challenge is. Beyond that, there is a model here that might work to solve other problems. I'm thinking crumbling infrastructure, a shortage of domestic energy and water, even more of a stretch into education, employment and crime. The right incentives might just unleash the proven power of business on some of these seemingly intractable public sector needs.