US/ND-4: Week Four Assignments
Week Four Assignments
Kevin Conde (KevinC@sutter.k12.ca.us)
Mon, 16 Sep 1996 15:31:46 -0700
The question asked for week four was "How can schools and libraries share
services with each other and with other community groups? How can these
activities be structured so as to foster competition among
telecommunications providers?"
I'm a Technology Coordinator for a county with several small rural school
districts, and these questions go to the heart of why most of our districts
don't have dedicated connections to the internet.
None of these school districts are affluent, yet all have managed to provide
some computers in the classrooms. What they can't afford to provide, even
if it were avialable, is a digital connection, i.e., Frame Relay, to connect
to the internet at an acceptable band width.
We are already sharing services. There are several hub locations, I'm one,
that small schools can connect to, and share my connection to the internet,
if the cost of the frame relay connections were affordable. A 128K frame
relay connection costs us roughly $350.00 per month. Most small schools can
not justify that kind of cost. A 56K connection costs $125.00, however, 56k
is simply not enough bandwidth for multiple computers in multiple classrooms.
And those costs are in addition to what those districts would have to pay me
to help offset my even higher datacomm costs, made necessary by the even
higher bandwidth I require to support attachments by multiple sites.
Bottom line - data comm costs must be reduced in order to make them viable
for small rural schools. This leads directly into the competition question.
Basically there is no competition for rural schools, or for any of our
schools that I'm aware of. The only datacomm vendor we have is Pacific
Bell! One vendor equals no competition which equals high costs and little
incentive for the vendor to add services that will not pay for themselves.
Although the act provides for more competition, a key to success will be
encouraging commercial datacomm vendors to enter into competition in
markets, i.e., rural areas, were profit margins are very slim.
I know what we need, but I'm not sure what the answers are.
Kevin
Kevin Conde
Technology Coordinator
Sutter County Superintendent of Schools Office
146 Garden Highway
Yuba City, CA 95991
916-822-5115, x103
KevinC@sutter.k12.ca.us
http://www.sutter.k12.ca.us