President Obama today is expected to call for a massive upgrade to data connections serving the nation’s schools. Several media outlets report that the president will recommend an initiative aimed at bringing high-speed broadband to nearly all of the nation’s schools within five years. According to the Washington Post, the initiative will be called ConnectED.
According to Hillicon Valley, the target broadband speed is 100 Mbps and the initiative is expected to cost “several billion dollars.”
President Obama is expected to announce the initiative at an event in Moorseville, N.C. this afternoon, where he will visit a school to highlight the benefits the school district has seen since it began providing laptop computers to all students.
If this program actually comes to pass it could be good news for network operators, including those in rural areas that have lagged behind metro areas in broadband availability because the cost of deploying broadband is higher than in urban areas. And as the “middle mile” broadband stimulus program demonstrated, once a community gets high-speed connectivity to the rest of the world via an anchor institution, it’s a lot easier for network operators to find a business case for bringing broadband to individual homes and businesses.
I have some serious doubts about whether this initiative will actually happen any time soon, however.
According to an Associated Press report, how to pay for the program would be up to the FCC. One option would be to use savings from the E-Rate program – a portion of the Universal Service program that funds Internet access in schools and libraries. Another option would be to impose a new temporary surcharge of about five dollars per year on phone bills, the AP reports.
Considering that the entire Universal Service program has an annual budget of $8 billion and the schools and libraries program is one of the smallest segments of that program, I don’t see any way of freeing up “several billion dollars” over five years simply from savings from that program.
And if the FCC were to attempt to impose a five dollar a year surcharge on phone bills, there would likely be strong opposition.
I have to give the president some credit for how he is positioning this, however.
Based on what we’ve heard so far, this isn’t being positioned as a primarily rural program. Ultimately I would assume a large portion of total funding would go to rural areas, as that’s where the cost of bringing broadband to schools would be the greatest. But as much of the dialog around planned Universal Service program reforms reveals, the sad reality is that there are a lot of Americans who couldn’t care less about whether rural America has broadband.
The idea of bringing broadband to schools nationwide is more inclusive and could have a bit better chance of acceptance.
President Obama undoubtedly will point to the improved academic achievement that the North Carolina laptops have provided and will talk about what that bodes for America’s future economic prosperity and global competitiveness.
Those are the same sort of arguments that were made about the space program back when it was in full gear. Some people opposed that, too, but did not succeed in stopping it – at least not for a long time.
A lot has changed since then, though. As a nation we’re less optimistic than we used to be and a lot more cynical about anything the government gets involved in.
The FCC clearly seems to see this, as it has taken no action on reforming the contribution side of the Universal Service program – other than to do its best to cap the program at current levels. Perhaps the president’s speech today will change that. But don’t count on it.
Ah, politics at work.
The schools have broadband…mostly free form Telco's and Cable companies, and indirectly paid for by residential and commercial broadband subscription fees. And towns get a barrel full of money from franchise fees to pay for just about any network upgrade they'd ever want or need. And Universities and libraries get much the same already…..fully subsidized and managed by demanding technocrats that continuously ask the operators to bend over. So why billions more of taxpayer dollars for bandwidth the schools could already get by simply ordering a low grade Ethernet port? (Yes, 100 Mb/s is low grade by today's standards). But, the real puzzle here is why schools should get higher grade access than residences and businesses who ultimately pay the freight – whether through subscription based subsidies, franchise fees, or Federal taxes?
This is a dumb Federal proposal to waste more taxpayer dollars. Keep the Feds out of networking and Congress, please dismantle to FCC – a vestige of the Ma Bell era and full of bureaucratic arthritis.
Amen, John Q. – The FCC still needs to ride herd on the cable cos with their vertically integrated (cable / broadcasters / programmers) conglomerates.
From what I heard, the results of the last USAC audits on E-Rates for Education was unbelieveable. So many unaccounted for dollars in the millions, while the rural high costs companies combined didn't even reach the million mark.
E-rate program already gives USF a black eye. This won’t help.
It would be interesting to learn how many schools are already fiber fed (where an upgrade would be electronics and more middle-mile capacity) versus non-fiber fed (where an upgrade may require a significant fiber build).
The Obama Administration’s announcement to connect American public classrooms to broadband Internet is welcome news. The proliferation of high-capacity networking technology is enabling new, immersive and intense learning experiences that can engage students in new and meaningful ways.
Ciena’s customers are already leading the way in deployments of 40G and 100G high-capacity networks and there is a great legacy of investment in broadband capacity focused specifically on research and education. From Internet2, Utah Education Network to CANARIE in Canada and many regional broadband networks, Ciena gear is powering educational experiences that we could never have imagined a decade ago.
Extending the power of the network into K-12 classrooms and, empowering teachers and students with new digital skills, will help to create sustainable markets for these non-profit middle mile broadband networks, while ensuring that the connectivity in our classrooms is keeping pace with global standards.