West Virginia Buys $22K Routers With Stimulus, Puts Them In Small Schools

DesScorp writes "The Charleston Gazette is reporting that the state of West Virginia has purchased hundred of enterprise class routers from Cisco at over $22,000 dollars apiece via federal stimulus money. The stimulus cash was intended to spread broadband coverage. The problem is that the routers are overkill, and are being placed in small schools and libraries with just a handful of users. The West Virginia Office of Technology warned that the purchase was 'grossly oversized' for the intended uses, but the purchase went through anyway. Curiously, the project is being headed up not by the state's usual authorities on such matters, but by Jimmy Gianato, West Virginia's Homeland Security Chief. In addition to the $24 million contract signed with Verizon Network Integration to provide the routers and maintenance, Gianato asked for additional equipment and services that tacked an additional $2.26 million to the bill. Perhaps the worst part is that hundreds of the routers are sitting in their boxes, unused, two years after the purchase."

Comments

How the money could better have been spent

[John.Banister]

I've been visiting with my parents here in WV and saw that story in the local paper a few days ago. I have to believe that someone had a buddy getting a commission, because that's how it generally goes here. I remember seeing this map a couple weeks before and can't help but think it'd be a better option for spreading broadband.

Re:How the money could better have been spent

[Anonymous Coward]

Because as soon as you get 18000 feet from the CO, you hit a loading coil, which kills DSL. Your mandate would require installing (and powering) DSLAMs essentially within 3 miles of any customer. Plus the back haul routers, power feeds, and other ancillary gear. Add it up, spread it around, you'd blow through the money spent on those WV routers pretty quick.

Which is not to say WV got the right routers for its needs. The 3945 ISR is an enterprise class machine, with capabilities to do things the WV libraries would never need. Cisco makes a number of SOHO routers that would have been perfect for what WV wanted for a lot less. (And in the article in Ars Technica, a Cisco sales rep essentially said so. That article said it was a reseller - Verizon Network Integration - who sold WV these routers, not Cisco themselves.)

Re:How the money could better have been spent

[uigrad_2000]

You have to be kidding. Letting luddite politicians control industries they don't understand is bad for a whole lot of reasons. You, obviously, do not understand DSL.

When a company makes a product or service available for some people and not others, there's usually a good reason. With DSL, it all has to do with the costs of adding new infrastructure.

Unlike basic phone lines, DSL performance is extremely sensitive to the distance from the CO.

If the phone company is going to charge me $1000/yr for DSL, and place a new CO just for me, then they better be able to get several hundred others in my neighborhood to also get service from the same CO. There's no way that my $1000/yr will pay for it.

If a mandate went in that all companies had to provide DSL to all possible customers, I guarantee there are some people who would be told that their service would costs thousands per month, because of their location. Now, you may think that this is easy to solve, by just price-fixing the cost also. If feel this way, then you should consider voting for Jimmy Carter this year.

Re:How the money could better have been spent

[Wolfraider]

FYI, you can use repeaters to overcome this. Centurylink has used a few repeaters to get DSL out in my area for only $50 a month. Grated the speed is only 1.5mb but I will take that over satellite any day. I live 12 miles from town or around 9 miles from the closest DSLAM.

Re:they got them with mark up and car like add one

[Reece400]

He sounds like he just doesn't understand how this works, He seems to think a $22,000 router would somehow faster or better than a $500 router even if only 4 people are connected to for basic web browsing. FTA: Gianato said putting the same size router in every school was about "equal opportunity." "We wanted to make sure a student in McDowell County had the same opportunities as a student in Kanawha County or anywhere else," he said. "A student in a school of 200 students should have the same opportunity as a student in a school with 2,000 students."

Re:Somewhere, Robert Byrd is smiling

[I Read Good]

No, Byrd was good at being on committees and refusing to sign off on anything that he could possibly get built in WV. There is a long list of government facilities that really have NO business being in WV, but they're here. My favorite example is the United States Coast Guard's Operations Systems Center. West Virginia, being land-locked and all, is an obvious choice for a base that supports a sea-faring service. This USCG station is directly adjacent to a massive IRS facility. In Fairmont, WV there is some NASA IV&V stuff as well as some NOAA facilities. Not to mention CJIS (the largest division of the FBI) in Clarksburg. Sugar Grove may be too old to be Byrd's doing, but the rest are relatively recent. I'm sure the list goes on; these are just the one's that I've personally dealt with.