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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."

4 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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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  4. 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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