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FCC Approves Plan To Spend $5B Over Next Five Years On School Wi-Fi
itwbennett writes: The Federal Communications Commission, in a 3-2 party-line vote Friday, approved a plan to revamp the 17-year-old E-Rate program, which pays for telecom services for schools and libraries, by phasing out funding for voice service, Web hosting and paging services, and redirecting money to Wi-Fi. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler had proposed a $5 billion budget for Wi-Fi, but Republican commissioners and some lawmakers had questioned where the money would come from. Still, the E-Rate revamp (PDF) approved Friday contemplates a $1 billion-a-year target for Wi-Fi projects "year after year," Wheeler said.
How about 5BN to turn off WiFi at schools, make kids and teachers alike actually log off Facebook for the two or three actual hours of education they get a day?
Cell towers in the middle of every playground for wi-max?
Provide money and guidance to the local school systems then let them buy the approved technology they need rather than what is dictated to them. Why is WiFi better or more important than web hosting? What if a school already has good WiFi but needs devices to make use of that network? Sounds like the "phasing out" process is more like "last call" at a bar and tells people to get those services from E-Rate now whether they need it or not cause soon the trough will only be feeding you WiFi. Guidance on good economic solutions for school technology needs and funding is what the school systems need. But hey keep on shoveling "one size fits all" technology into the schools. It keeps the vendors happy even if it doesn't help the schools or children all that much.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Facebook can be pretty easily blocked at the router level. On the other hand, there's a variety of lesson plans and administrative tools used in education that can benefit from better connectivity.
But that would turn them into terrorists hackers, and we can't have that.
I think the question is, who will earn a large part of that $1B/year? What "partner" is ready to facilitate this mass wi-fi rollout?
I am tired of solving virtualization challenges and figuring out how manage petabytes of data. I'm going to take the next couple of years off and setup a consulting company installing WAPs in schools. That is obviously where the money is at....
Building wide WiFi is not something the FCC really regulates. They put some standards on manufacturers to comply with but beyond that there is no interaction at the user level.
Furthermore, providing wifi is a state or city matter not a federal matter.
IF the FCC wants to help they can break up these monopolies and stop them from engaging in non-competitive behavior.
Otherwise the FCC can just go fuck themselves with a chainsaw.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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"A 'person' is smart. 'People' are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
Actually, Wi-Fi is cheaper at delivering Internet access to teacher and lab computers than wired connections. While slower, there is only a need for one PoE port to cover many computers. For schools with older wiring, this is probably a more cost effective methods of providing that access.
It's been true for hotels. Although this at first seems counterintuitive, for awhile, newer hotels, which had been built with Cat 5 to the room, had wired internet but no wireless, while older hotels, who couldn't retrofit wired but *could* put in access points, had wireless but no wired. Now pretty much everyone has wireless. In the near future, you may be able to guess within a few years when a hotel was built by whether or not there's a RJ45 socket in the wall.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
wifi for a large population say 600+ for a high school is going to be far more costly than a structured cabling roll out which is only $25/30$ per port
Not if you're installing the wiring in a school built in the 20's with masonry walls, no dropped ceilings, and flat arch clay tile floors.
Not if you're installing the wiring in a school built in the 20's with masonry walls, no dropped ceilings, and flat arch clay tile floors.
Yes, exactly. Case in point, my daughter's arts and communications school (6 through 12) is a very old grade school (still has steam heat) that was repurposed as a charter school, and to wire the school for internet would require tearing so much down that it would have to be rebuilt anyway.
The thing about wifi is that it can be retrofitted with very little construction. In an older building, this matters.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
wifi for a large population say 600+ for a high school is going to be far more costly than a structured cabling roll out which is only $25/30$ per port
Depends on the building. Consider that many schools were built long before anyone thought you'd need to run wires for some new purpose that nobody had thought of at the time of construction.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You still have to run wires for Wi-Fi for poe Ethernet to connect the AP's to the Ethernet network - in the case you cant put the wires in the ceiling or floor the you will have to add trunking. Using trunking might be better less chance of finding asbestos in the roof spaces as a mate of mine found in one of our local schools.
well you need to run cables for a large wifi installation - could they not just put trunking along the walls?
unfortunately you need to run cables to the access points. Wifi for large numbers is not the same as just plonking a single access point next to your phone/cable socket.
unfortunately you need to run cables to the access points. Wifi for large numbers is not the same as just plonking a single access point next to your phone/cable socket.
It's a matter of numbers. Enterprise grade wifi access points can support up to 200 users. A single hard wired connection is typically single user. (You could expand with switches, but then you've got exposed equipment and wires and are essentially making the teacher act as network administrator.)
With a physical wire difference of 200:1, wiring access points is a lot less intrusive.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
er not what the wireless CCNA says they quote 10 hosts per AP as a rule of thumb for wifi deployments