[1st-mile-nm] Bloomfield, NM School District Networking

[Richard Lowenberg]

I recently came across the following article in THE Journal, and educational
magazine.  The article left me with some questions, which I just spoke to
Sondra about.   The broadband solution she refers to is a district-wide WiMax
network, which provides from 10 to 100Mbps between district schools, for
internal communications.   External backhaul networking needs are still served
by multiple T-1s.  Qwest seems to have been very upset with this solution,
however, never responded to the District's RFP.   Of additional note, 600
students have laptops provided by a grant from the New Mexico Laptop Planning
Initiative.
rl
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March 2008 ? News

Case Study: Bloomfield SD's Migration to Broadband and VoIP

by Sondra Adams

As the IT director for Bloomfield School District in New Mexico, I faced a major
challenge with our infrastructure when it came time to upgrade our network and
voice systems to meet our educational and technological objectives. The
district, with 10 administrative and school sites, is located in a rural area
of northwestern portion of the state, which limited the alternatives available
to us. Its network was based on T1 connections, and the bandwidth would not
support the education initiatives of the district. It was also very expensive,
costing us about $5,900 each month.

On top of that, another large budget item was $60,000 we paid for annual
maintenance on the PBX. Unfortunately we could not rely on Priority 2 E-Rate
funding for the maintenance because our E-Rate discount is 77 percent. Funding
cutoff for Priority 2 services has varied from 69 percent to 84 percent over
the last five years. Bloomfield did not have the budget to upgrade the network,
pay for voice T1s, and pay $60,000 in annual maintenance fees.

As it turns out, there was a single solution to both of these issues. Partnering
with broadband provider Trillion Partners, Bloomfield was able to deploy a WAN
with 10 to 100 times the bandwidth of our previous system and migrate our
legacy PBX system to a voice over IP (VoIP) service--all for less than what we
had previously been paying.

The Costs
For our district's educational objectives, the obvious option--adding additional
T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps--would not have met our bandwidth needs and would have
added unreasonably to costs. I met with Trillion, who demonstrated to how we
could best implement a broadband WAN that would provide 10 to 100 times the
bandwidth of the old network and save money. And we'd be able to eliminate our
old T1 lines and the cost of maintenance for our PBX-based voice system by
implementing a VoIP service as part of the deployment. (And, as an added bonus,
we'd eliminate the onsite maintenance requirements of that PBX.)

With VoIP, we were able to eliminate most of the expensive T1s. And, because
Trillion's service is Priority 1, we essentially turned the $60,000 that we
were paying out of pocket for PBX maintenance into $261,000 worth of Priority 1
E-Rate services. (As a 77 percent E-Rate district, we pay 23 percent
out-of-pocket. Hence $60,000/0.23 = $261,000.) The savings from eliminating T1s
and the buying power of Priority 1 services helped us fund both our new
broadband WAN and our new VoIP services for less than we were paying before.

Improved Network and Telecommunications
This new high-speed broadband WAN has helped us revolutionize communications
within our district, providing over 10 to 100 times the bandwidth of our old T1
network. This year we are deploying 15 new teaching and administrative
applications across our district to enhance learning and increase productivity.

The VoIP telephony service is enabling our teachers to stay more connected with
parents, collaborate better with each other and feel safer knowing they can get
help if they need it. Our new service provider delivers our WAN, Internet and
VoIP telephony services--giving us one point of accountability.

At first, I was reluctant to install a new telephony system. Our previous
installation had been very painful, taking many months to deploy. We had
constant problems with our vendor and with the carrier supplying T1
connectivity to our schools. Another pain point with our legacy PBX solution
was end user administration that required my team to travel onsite. When
Trillion mentioned VoIP, I was also concerned about the overall impact it would
have on my team. We had experience with PBX-based telephony, but none of us had
experience with VoIP. I'd heard that VoIP could be complex to manage.

But after much discussion and reference checks we decided to implement the
broadband WAN and VoIP telephony solution throughout the Bloomfield district,
and my concerns turned out to be unfounded. The deployment across 10 sites
involving more than 400 handsets took three days.

As for the impact, users really appreciated the new phones, and the new system
was quickly adopted. Teachers liked the ability to stay in touch with parents
from the privacy of their classroom. Teachers also said they felt more
comfortable knowing they could communicate with the outside world during a
lockdown. The system has also been used for safety measures. Recently, one of
our teachers received obscene and threatening voice messages while at work. We
used call records to trace the caller to a local motel where authorities were
able to arrest the perpetrator. We wouldn't have been able to do that with our
legacy system.

Our IT department has also benefited from the migration to the new network and
VoIP. Instead of adding more work to my staff, our VoIP service has actually
decreased our workload while helping us provide better service to our
administrators and teachers. With Trillion's solution in place I've essentially
added highly skilled network and VoIP engineers to my staff that work 24 hours a
day. They monitor and manage the system around the clock. Unlike my previous
vendor, my new VoIP service does not require me to go onsite to make end user
changes. I can make end user changes, at any of our 10 sites, while sitting at
my desk.

About the author: Sondra Adams is the director of technology for Bloomfield
School District, New Mexico. She can be reached at sadams at bsin.k12.nm.us.

Trillion, Inc., Austin, TX   www.trillion.net

-- 
Richard Lowenberg
1st-Mile Institute
P.O. Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
505-989-9110;   505-603-5200 cell
rl at 1st-mile.com  www.1st-mile.com

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