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

[peter]

Richard

I looked all through Trillions tech data and could not find any 
reference to protocol are you sure they are using 802.16 ?

Whats the journal url ref

( : ( : pete

Peter Baston

*IDEAS*

/www.ideapete.com/ <http://www.ideapete.com/>


 

 



Richard Lowenberg wrote:
> 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
> ---------
>
> 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
>
>   
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