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The Luxury of a Bottomless Bucket of Bandwidth For Georgia Schools

Posted by Soulskill on from the 4k-cat-videos-for-all-students dept.

Lemeowski writes: The IT departments at all the University System of Georgia institutions have a luxury that most CIOs could only dream of — access to about 2,800 miles of free fiber and a private cloud that they an always count on. The private cloud configuration allows the perk of not focusing on bandwith. "Our local CIOs even take some pleasure in telling telecom company representatives, 'If you can beat free, then I'm willing to listen.' That tends to shut down most conversations,"writes USG CIO Curt Carver, who explains how the technology is now becoming an educational equalizer across the state. In 2015, Georgia school districts are expected to have a 33-fold increase in bandwdith available to them through the program. "This will help to flatten the state. No more haves or have-nots in terms of bandwidth going into the school districts."

11 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Bandwidth is not a finite resource by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And I wish people would stop talking about as such its unlimited everything is run by peering agreements were the backbone providers just exchange traffic for free. The only charge is the last mile of infrastructure and theres no reason that has to be expensive either.

  2. Free Beating by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    'If you can beat free, then I'm willing to listen.'

    Well, someone should tell them its not free, its just that they don't get the bill. Its not clear from the article what the actual cost is.

    1. Re:Free Beating by clovis · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You don't get it. If you gave him that beer from the community fund, that he himself was contributing to, he didn't get a free beer and might wonder why you were using the community chess to give him a beer, or if that was the wisest use of that money. If the state educational system is funding it, just because a school doesn't see the bill doesn't mean its free. Or, in your case, everything for the school is free because they really aren't paying for anything, they are just workers at the schools. My example is a lot shorter as well!

      It drive me nuts when someone makes the argument that something is not free because somebody paid for it somewhere.
      It's free to the person who got it and did not pay for it, otherwise the word "free" has no meaning.

      Sure, Peachnet is funded ultimately by the State of Georgia taxes and lottery players, and all money ultimately comes from the labor of the proletariat or something like that. The thing is that various entities have their own budgets, whether it's my bank account, schools, or the fire department. And this is not in the budgets of the school systems that are receiving the service.

      The fiber rollout to these schools is happening outside their budgets - it's not an item to them.
      Nor can they choose to spend the money on something else that they might think is a better use because they never see any money.

      The thing is that many, if not most of the schools that are getting the fiber have no money for such things because they have little tax base.
      There are 159 counties in Ga, and of those about half have less than 25,000 population. 30 counties have less than 10,000 people. Their tax base is not enough to fund getting fiber, network infrastructure, and support run to anywhere especially for the few students they have. Their contribution to the tax base is a fraction of what they get back.

      If the state did not provide the fiber at no cost to them, those schools would have no fiber.
      It is irrelevant that there may have been a wiser use of the money because they never had the money.


      If you asked me if it was free to the people of the State of Georgia, then no it isn't. The money came out of our pockets.
      But it's free to the school systems.

  3. Re:Free to who? by blackomegax · · Score: 2

    You forget, tuition in the US is absurd and more than enough to cover the infrastructure and land use.

  4. Free Market Solution? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This doesn't seem like a good Free Market solution. The state of Georgia could save a lot of money by having private enterprises, with expertise in these areas, sell bandwidth to individual schools. It's just a short move from this, to the communism that is municipal broadband.

  5. GFD by sootman · · Score: 4, Funny

    I only recently finished convincing all my non-technie friends that the Internet is not a series of tubes; now I have to start explaining to them that bandwidth does not actually come in buckets. Do you realize how many pounds of email I'll have to write about this? Fuck it, I quit.

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  6. Re:So who's taxes are paying for this? by everett · · Score: 2

    I imagine it's paid for by the "technology use fees" paid by every student of the USG.

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  7. In other words, it's a Utility. by gurps_npc · · Score: 5, Insightful
    A state run one at that.

    And proves pretty well, that the government can and does do things better than private corporations.

    The key is that the government works best when the service/commodity in questions needs to go to everyone and does not truly have inherent differences in quality, besides quantity.

    The internet fits this bill, just like water, electricity, and roads.

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    1. Re:In other words, it's a Utility. by by+(1706743) · · Score: 2

      How much do you pay for your electricity? Surely the IRS is getting their grubby hands on every joule there as well? Is it exorbitantly expensive?

      Chances are it's about the same price you pay for gasoline, per unit usable energy.

  8. Re:So who's taxes are paying for this? by sandytaru · · Score: 2

    'Twas $75 a year the last time I was a student in 2013. Good to know my money went to something awesome.

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    Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
  9. Re:Free to who? by clovis · · Score: 2

    Surely it's not free to the taxpayers.

    True, but the point is that it's free to the end point user, who would have nothing otherwise.
    Instead of having each of the 6,000 plus schools and colleges run their own network department, each rent bandwidth, and each run a budget item for it, the University System of Georgia pays for it and maintains it. In other words, just like any large corporation would do. Schools in rural areas an't get high-speed bandwidth through the commercial carriers for anything affordable, and in some rural areas you can't get it at all. And, once the capital cost of laying the fiber and equipment is done, then it costs a fraction of what the monthly rent from ISPs would be.