Schools in Greeneville, Tennessee, are about to save on Internet connectivity to the tune of $50,000 per year, thanks to a partnership with the municipal electric utility.

Local Utility, Local Solution

Greeneville City Schools (GCS), which obtains Internet access via the state’s Education Networks of America (ENA), used to obtain cable connections from big providers that worked with ENA. Comcast and CenturyLink are two of the local providers that lease lines to the schools with ENA as the entity that arranged the connections. Not anymore.

GCS, ENA, and the Greeneville Light & Power System (GLPS) have entered into a new partnership to use GLPS fiber-optic infrastructure to bring Internet access to school facilities. As a result, the school will cut telecommunications costs by approximately $50,000 per year and double their capacity.

Assistant Director of Schools and Chief Technology Officer Beverly Miller told the Greeneville Sun:

“GCS is extremely pleased and excited about moving network fiber optic cabling dependence to the local community power provider. GLPS is an exceptional electrical provider with a stellar reputation for reliability and high performance. In addition to the expectation of improved service, the school district anticipates significant financial savings as a result of this new partnership.”

According to GLPS General Manager Bill Carroll, the utility already had significant infrastructure in place, which it uses for its own facilities. Connecting GCS schools and administration facilities wasn’t a difficult undertaking. In fact, GLPS hopes to reproduce the plan for the Greene County Schools to reduce their costs in a similar fashion:

“We have 2,200 miles of high voltage (power) lines and just 60 miles of fiber, mostly in the city,” Carroll said. “We’ve been routing fiber very carefully to pass by government buildings, schools and other folks we can serve in the future. At some point, we can do the same for Greene County’s schools and government buildings, but it’s a matter of logistics.”

Starting With The Schools

Our newest fact sheet, More than just Facebook, provides an overview on how Internet access and fast, affordable, reliable connectivity reaches most aspects of our lives. We provide statistics on economic development, education, and methods of delivering Internet access. This fact sheet is a good introductory tool that points out how Internet access is much more than just social media.

We also offer some explanations of concepts that may not be familiar to people who don’t work in the telecommunications field or advocate for municipal networks. This fact sheet is a tool that lays out what publicly owned Internet infrastructure and better connectivity can mean for your community.

Share it with friends, relatives, and your elected officials who might wonder if they could do more than “Like” pithy posts if they had better connectivity.

Download More than just Facebook.

Conway, Arkansas, has been offering Internet access for approximately 20 years; in December, it will begin offering Gigabit (1,000 Megabits per second) download connectivity to the community. Conway's highest tier Internet access will cost $94.95 per month. According to Conway Corp.'s announcement, the utility will use a 32-channel cable modem to deliver the faster download speeds via the current infrastructure. Upload speeds will be 50 Mbps.

In a statement, reproduced in Multichannel News, CEO Richard Arnold said:

“Internet usage has grown and will continue to as cloud-based products and services become more prevalent. Gigabit download speeds seem a luxury today, but may be tomorrow’s necessity.”

Between 1995 and 1997, the utility completed a citywide cable rebuild in which they used both fiber and coaxial cable. The $5.6 million project allowed them to offer Internet access to Conway subscribers. As an early adopter of municipal Internet access, Conway’s move toward Gig connectivity makes sense:

“For several years, we have been on a strategic path toward gigabit service,” said chief technology officer Jason Hansen in a statement. “With this initiative, Conway Corp is embracing its position as an Internet technology leader.”

Conway Corp’s Internet rates also include:

• Basic : 6 Mbps download / 1 Mbps upload - $36.95 per month
• Broadband 25 : 25 Mbps / 3 Mbps - $41.95 per month
• Broadband 50 : 50 Mbps / 5 Mbps - $51.95 per month
• Broadband 100 : 100 Mbps / 10 Mbps - $84.95 per month

The Federal Reserve is responsible for setting interest rates and executing monetary policy in the United States, but many people don’t realize that the agency also has a hand in community development. This summer, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas released a report, Closing the Digital Divide: A Framework for Meeting CRA Obligations, which includes information for banks about funding digital inclusion programs and community networks.

The report, published in July, states:

“Access to broadband has become essential to make progress in all areas of community development—education and workforce development, health, housing, small-business development and access to financial services.”

Closing the Digital Divide is important not only because it provides substantial information for banks, but also because it indicates federal support exists for community-based infrastructure improvements. The report discusses improving Internet access for low and moderate-income individuals and neighborhoods.

Using The Community Reinvestment Act To Improve Infrastructure

From the 1930 until the late 1970s, many banks denied lending to individuals and organizations based on their location. The practice is called “redlining” after the red ink that outlined low-income neighborhoods on a map, and was made illegal when Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in 1977. Under the CRA, banks must to use the same evaluation criteria for all loan applicants regardless of the neighborhood they live in, which expands lending to include low and moderate-income (LMI) individuals. The Federal Reserve assesses banks’ performance under CRA guidelines, which bring about $100 million in capital to low and moderate income areas per year through various projects. Improving Internet access is an increasingly large portion of these initiatives.

In The Weeds

Digital learning initiatives for K-12 grades and online coursework for college programs both require high-speed connectivity in school and at home. Policymakers cannot overlook this issue when discussing municipal networks.

The Education Commission of the States addressed connectivity in the classroom and at home in a short policy report, entitled Inhibiting Connection: State policy impacting expansion of municipal broadband networks in September 2016. 

Inside the Report

Co-authors Lauren Sisneros and Brian Sponsler provide an overview of how municipal network issues intersect with state education goals. The paper covers the major arguments for and against municipal networks as well as current state laws restricting those networks:

"As state education policymakers explore options to support postsecondary access and success, they may be well served to consider their states’ policy addressing municipal broadband networks."

They also highlight our Community Networks Initiative as a resource for policymakers to access fact sheets, case studies, and videos. 

Read the entire policy report on the Education Commission of the States' website. 

For more information on connectivity in schools in general, check out our Institutional Networks page.

This is episode 228 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. Fiber Infrastructure and Right of Way Manager David Young of Lincoln, Nebraska, describes the city's work with local Internet Service Provider, Allo Communications. Listen to this episode here. 

Listen to, or read the transcript for, episode 182 in which David Young, Mike Lang, and Steve Huggenberger discuss conduit policy in more detail.

David Young: Engaging your provider, engaging your community upfront and deciding what your model should be and then creating a plan and executing that plan is very important.

Lisa Gonzalez: This is episode 228 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. I'm Lisa Gonzalez . A number of states have laws on the books that obstruct local governments from directly providing high quality Internet access to businesses and residents, or even partnering with local providers. Nebraska happens to be one of them. In Lincoln the community found a way to work within the confines of the law by using publicly owned conduit and creating a welcoming environment for private Internet Service Providers. As a result, Lincoln has entered into an agreement with the local provider Allo Communications who will use the conduit to build its Fiber-to-the-Home network. David Young, Lincoln's Fiber Infrastructure and Right of Way Manager talks with Chris this week. David discusses the early days of the project and how it has evolved. He also shares more information about the franchise agreement and more about the partner Lincoln chose. Be sure to take a few moment and listen to Chris' interview with David and several of his colleagues in episode 182 from last December. Now here are Chris and David Young, Lincoln, Nebraska's Fiber Infrastructure and Right of Way Manager talking about the community's conduit network and how they are capitalizing on it to bring better connectivity and technology to Lincoln.

When Liberty County, Georgia’s school system, began a one-to-one iPad initiative, they were making a positive impact in technology readiness for local school kids. After a year of the program, however, district officials determined that lack of Internet access at home was so prevalent, students ran the risk of falling behind. To fix the problem and allow kids to work online away from school, the school district is installing buses with Wi-Fi equipment and parking them throughout the community, creating “Homework Zones.”

Taking Internet Access To The Streets

In Liberty County, approximately 60 percent of students don’t have Internet access at home, which renders school issued iPads useless at home. Access is available in libraries, when there are extended school hours, and sometimes in other public locations, but using public Wi-Fi takes kids away from home; some kids are just too young to be out at night.

Pat Millen, Co-Founder and President of Eliminate the Digital Divide, spoke with Christopher for episode #218 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. He described some of the burdens associated with finding Internet access away from home, just to complete your homework:

…[T]hink about the kid staying after school in the media center of the school until the very last second that the janitor needs to lock the door so that he can do his work. Then think about the same kid walking through all kinds of weather to get to the public library and hop on one of their computers.

…

Think about that same kid walking home in the dark through some of the toughest neighborhoods in the area...Then think about this very same kid going through the motions of walking through the rain and the dark or the heat and the sun to get to the library that's two miles from his house. Then think of him taking measure of his life's prospects. "I can't get this work done. I'm not going to be able to pass this class. My family is so poor, shouldn't I just go ahead and drop out and go try to find a job?" 

CapeNet, the local Internet service provider, on the OpenCape community network is expanding in southeastern Massachusetts. Bridgewater State University will connect to the OpenCape network for more bandwidth and more reliable Internet access.

Connectivity for Education

Bridgewater State University needed to ensure reliable connectivity for its students because many university courses have online, cloud-based, or video components. In fact, nearly every school CapeNet serves requests more bandwidth each year, reports the Bridgewater Wicked Local.

Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at Bridgewater State University, Raymond V. Lefebvre, summed up the importance of connectivity for education institutions: 

“We pursued this additional Internet bandwidth in support of teaching, research, collaboration, learning and our residence students.”

More Reliable, Higher Bandwidth

The university already has connectivity through another provider, but wanted a second fiber connection to ensure redundancy. Connecting to OpenCape not only increases bandwidth, but also improves reliability. The OpenCape network traverses an entirely different route than the university’s other fiber connection. 

If the first fiber connection fails (i.e. if the cable gets damaged or equipment goes down), students’ and professors’ work will not be interrupted thanks to the connection to the OpenCape network. The second connection will keep information flowing. Alan Davis, CEO of CapeNet, explained:

“Because the OpenCape Network has virtually unlimited capacity and was designed to eliminate single points of failure, it is a valuable tool for institutions like Bridgewater State.”

In April we wrote about the Mid-Atlantic Gigabit Innovation Collaboratory (MAGIC), an innovative new educational program in Westminster, Maryland, that gives local high school students opportunities to learn new technology skills through hands-on, real world projects. After the success of the program’s first project, the MAGIC program created a temporary wireless network for a second project -- this time for the city’s annual Westminster Flower and Jazz Festival held during Mother's Day weekend.

The MAGIC program is a collaborative effort between Ting Internet and Freedom Broadband, with Ting offering networking equipment and Freedom supervising the project. Ting is the private partner and operator of the City of Westminster’s open access municipal fiber network. Freedom Broadband is the leading provider of wireless Internet in the surrounding Carroll County region.

Festivals and Fiber

The temporary network gave festivalgoers access to extremely fast, high bandwidth wireless connections that connected to Westminster's fiber network. While strolling through the festival to see local jazz musicians and sampling from hundreds of vendors offering food, flowers, and crafts, attendees were be able to wirelessly connect their phones, tablets, and other devices to the city's fiber network during the one day event.

For the program’s first “Tech Incubation” project in April, the MAGIC program’s 15 students also created and operated a temporary wireless network that the City of Westminster used at its annual Celtic Canter and Downtown Irish Celebration. These first two projects are part of a continuous series in which the students have opportunities to further expand and refine their technology knowledge.

Leveraging Municipal Fiber for Economic and Cultural Benefits