The House and Senate Education committees Monday again debated how to increase broadband high-speed Internet access for public schools.

People from four different groups presented conflicting information about whether school districts have sufficient access to fiber-optic cables to provide access to high-speed Internet.

Advocates for greater access say the lack of bandwidth will increasingly cause problems as more standardized tests move to online formats. They also say areas with low bandwidth will struggle to comply with a new law requiring every school district to provide at least one interactive online course, beginning this fall.

In April, a committee of educators who studied the issue released the Quality Digital Learning Study. It recommended that the Legislature change the law to allow school districts to sign onto the Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network (ARE-ON)-- a public-private partnership that gives universities, community colleges and teaching hospitals access to high-speed broadband.

The committee said districts should work to provide schools with 100 kilobits per second of bandwidth for each student by the end of the next school year.

Bandwidth, or the rate information can move across a data connection, is measured in kilobits per second.

Some lawmakers questioned whether Internet availability is really a problem.

"I see all of the fiber optics that are all over the state," said Rep. Charlotte Douglas, R-Alma. "The access is there. Is it just that the school districts are not buying what's available?"

But one witness said availability and affordability are both problems in some areas.

"I don't think that it's an either-or; I think that it's an and," said Jerry Jones, an executive vice president of Acxiom. "In terms of making it a priority, I believe the state of Arkansas needs to set some standard in terms of access. I believe that it's critical."

Jones is chairman of FASTER Arkansas, a task force Gov. Mike Beebe appointed to study broadband connectivity.

Its members are mainly industry officials. The group has endorsed the Quality Digital Learning Study and its recommendations.

One task force member, Arvest Bank executive Kendall Gibbons, said opening the ARE-ON network to school districts would create greater competition between Internet providers and likely drive down prices.

"It removes barriers to competition by opening up affordable statewide access points," Gibbons said.

If the network's cables could be tapped, small Internet providers would be able to provide broadband access to school districts without having to build large infrastructures, potentially increasing competition and lowering prices.

The Bureau of Legislative Research presented a cost study to the committees Monday that examined what school districts paid for broadband in the 2012-13 school year. Districts paid $4.74 million total for broadband access that year, with one district reporting a cost of $912,717. Bureau staff members said they did not know if that was before or after reimbursement from the federal E-Rate Program, which refunds school districts at varying levels based on the number of students considered to be in poverty.

The study showed 68 percent of the state's 238 school districts spent less than $10,000 a year on broadband. Those numbers may be flawed, however, because 48 districts either reported spending nothing or left the question blank, bureau staff members said.

Private Internet providers have said allowing school districts to access ARE-ON would put those companies in direct competition with the state; they say they already have built fiber-optic networks that reach most rural school districts.

Julie Mullenix, a spokesman for the Rural Arkansas Telephone Systems and a lobbyist, said the telecommunications companies she represents are willing to assist school districts.

"To some degree, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the telecommunication companies have been painted as villains," Mullenix said. "Telecommunication providers have spent decades and multimillions of dollars investing in the infrastructure in the state."

She said the group pays a large amount of taxes from their profits and pointed to those profits paving the way for future jobs for the students being educated in public schools.

She said it could cost $500 million to connect the state's public kindergarten-through-12th-grade schools to the ARE-ON network.

But Jones said the state needed to start moving forward to provide broadband access.

"This is not the panacea; this is not the complete solution, but it is part of the puzzle that needs to be put together," Jones said. "We already have a taxpayer funded backbone -- the ARE-ON infrastructure -- in place. Currently blocked by five words in Arkansas law ... and there's no viable reason that barrier should not be removed."

Metro on 06/10/2014