Arkansas can provide good Internet access to all of its school districts without raising spending sharply if it stops using copper and starts using fiber optic cable, a high-tech nonprofit said Monday.
Evan Marwell, chief executive officer of EducationSuperHighway, appeared with Gov. Mike Beebe at a news conference Monday to announce a partnership between his nonprofit group and the state.
The nonprofit is working to meet national goals for Internet access in the country's public schools and pledged to help Arkansas come up with a strategic plan to increase high-speed Internet access at all of its school districts. The group, which is funded by private foundations, donates staff members and resources to help states and school districts take stock of their Internet resources and better use their funding to provide high-speed Internet to every student.
The state spends $15 million a year through its Department of Information Services in laying copper wire to provide Internet service to rural areas and to the department-operated Internet hubs located across the state. EducationSuperHighway officials conducted an inventory of the state's efforts, costs and assets and found the simplest way to increase high-speed Internet would be to cut out the copper.
"You are investing enough money today in K-12 connectivity to reach your goal. You're spending a portion of the money inefficiently," said Joe Freddoso, the former chief executive officer of MCNC, a North Carolina broadband nonprofit that helped expand broadband across that state.
Freddoso is working with EducationSuperHighway to evaluate the availability of broadband access in the pilot states. Both Freddoso and Marwell said they believe Arkansas can provide adequate broadband to every school district in the state by 2018.
"Arkansas is one of two states that's going to benefit from some enormously profitable expertise at no cost," Beebe said. "The good thing, at least for now, is that it looks like we don't have to spend a whole lot more money. We have to redirect some money we're spending. The ability to redirect will allow Arkansas to leverage further resources that will increase high speed Internet across our state and proliferate it in our public schools."
Virginia began its pilot program with the nonprofit group in June.
Broadband Internet access has come into sharp focus in Arkansas over the past year as both the Legislature and the governor directed different study committees to examine the availability of Internet in the state's public schools.
The lack of bandwidth is starting to cause problems for school districts as more standardized tests are offered only online. Act 1280 of 2013, passed by the Arkansas Legislature, also requires every school to provide at least one interactive online course, beginning this fall.
The questions of how to increase that access has caused a rift between the study committees and the private Internet service providers.
The committees say the state should open up the high-speed, fiber optic cable system that serves most of the state's colleges and universities called the Arkansas Research Education Optical Network and known as ARE-ON to public K-12 schools.
Service providers argue that they have spent millions of dollars laying fiber optic cables across the state in the last decade, so service should be available at most school districts. They also argue that opening the ARE-ON network, which is owned by a private-public partnership, will put the providers in direct competition with the state for customers.
Beebe said Monday that he still believes opening the ARE-ON network would benefit schools, but said the new program announced Monday will focus on redirecting efforts being made by the state's Department of Information Services.
Marwell said the fiber cables are less expensive, more efficient and are used by the majority of Internet providers. He said the inefficient infrastructure means the Arkansas Public School Computer Network is paying about $300 per Megabit of internet access per month.
"To put that into perspective, the typical cable modem you have at your home is somewhere between 10 and 20 Megabits," Marwell said. "That would mean you would be paying between $3,000 and $6,000 per month for your cable modem connection at home. Certainly that's not acceptable in today's environment."
Switching to fiber will mean the state can get more Internet speed and more cable for the money it's already spending, he said.
Marwell said before the shift to fiber happens, the group will spend the next month finishing up Stage One of the strategic plan, which includes reviewing data from the federal e-rate program. The program reimburses school districts for a percentage of their Internet access bill and collects information about schools' Internet usage and student demographics.
Stage Two will include working with school districts, the state and Internet service providers to work out a strategic plan. Members of the study committees were present at the news conference Monday, but service providers were not.
Freddoso said he has been meeting with service providers over the past week to discuss possible partnerships.
"If we can show the business opportunity to those providers, they would be willing to cooperate and collaborate with us at an even higher rate than they've already done," he said. "The ones I met with pledged that they would be on board if the business model worked, and I think that's where we are now."
Meanwhile, Beebe said the Department of Finance and Administration will conduct a full performance audit of the Department of Information Services, spurred by concerns about wide ranges of prices Arkansas school districts are paying for internet services. Schools throughout the state get about 5 percent of their internet connectivity through the Department of Information Services, which has been using the more expensive copper wires.
The strategic plan likely won't end the ongoing debate about broadband availability. The Legislature has called for two separate studies, one to determine the cost of providing adequate internet service to students and a second approved last week to take inventory of the existing infrastructure, equipment and cost of service.
The Legislature will approve a plan for making sure all school districts have access to broadband as part of its biennial educational adequacy study, but the details of what that plan will look like are still being debated.
Metro on 08/12/2014