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

[Steve Ross]

Trillion usually arranges licensed bandwidth -- 38 GHz, 
maybe lower, for schools when they go wireless. Exact band 
depends on the local situation. They also string/rent/buy a 
lot of fiber. The wireless equipment is fairly cheap and 
very reliable in the Southwest.

They've run a nice "e-rate" business for years -- started 
with 802.11b back in 2000 or so, maybe 2001.

They are hardly the only ones in New Mexico that do licensed 
wireless hookups for commercial/educational/muni customers, 
much to Qwest's annoyance. I've run into a few providers 
right in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque area.

BTW, Scott DeGarmo (my boss at BBP) says anyone on this list 
with a state or muni affiliation can get into our Broadband 
Summit April 28-30 at DFW for the muni rate of only $50. 
That's about a tenth the normal rate, and covers the cost of 
some nice meals and receptions and free conference wifi. 
(For those who have attended in the past, we've moved the 
date from September.)

The schedule details are at

http://www.bbpmag.com/2008summit/agenda-brief.php

email me or Scott for the muni rate code.

Registration is running well ahead of last fall's summit, 
which drew about 800. That, in turn, suggests that the 
telecommunications corner of the real estate industry is 
doing fine.... or that people are having trouble figuring 
out the new FCC regs, economic climate, and all the neat 
stuff brought on by new bend-tolerant fiber technology. FCC 
Commissioner Deb Tate will be there, and some great muni 
network builders, like Tim Nulty.





Steven S. Ross
Editor-in-Chief
Broadband Properties
steve at broadbandproperties.com
www.bbpmag.com
SKYPE: editorsteve
+1 781-284-8810
+1 646-216-8030 fax
+1 201-456-5933 mobile

peter wrote:
> 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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