Classrooms go high speed

In 1998, the total telecom bill for the entire education sector was $6.5 billion, according to The Insight Research Corp. That sector includes public and private schools, elementary through college. Still, this is only about half of what other sectors, such as health care, spent last year.

Considering this and the historically low wages teachers earn, how would a school district get enough money to build an ATM network that allowed Web-based testing, distance learning, online scheduling and videoconferencing?

The answer is the Universal Service Fund. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 established the Universal Service Fund to provide benefits for telecom services used by schools and libraries across the country. Because of this fund, the Jackson, Miss., Public School district received $3.4 million to support its investment in The Learning Connection, a network that BellSouth Business is installing. It will deliver advanced teaching, administrative and security systems to more than 32,000 students and 4000 employees at 58 schools and facilities.

"It is not surprising that providers are serving the educational setting because it gives them a showcase to strut their capabilities," said Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Research. "For the next several years, ATM will be the preferred [choice for] access."

Perhaps the most convincing reason for schools to implement high-speed service is to provide advanced placement classes in secondary schools, Rosenberg said. In this way, students can learn more even faster. Although the schools are not big telecom users, Rosenberg believes this may change, given the efforts being made.

"Telecom would make [increased productivity] possible. We have the backbone, and if access came along, we could create incentives for universities to participate in this sort of thing," he said.

Besides improving education through technology, issues such as teacher shortages could be combated with videoconferencing.

"We lean heavily on videoconferencing so we can handle the teacher shortage," said Kemper Porter, network administrator for the Jackson Public School district.

The district also will conduct one of the first educational trials of a voice-over-IP phone system with services such as voice mail and caller ID. The solution will benefit the Jackson school system, Porter said, because teachers often move within the district. "With legacy phones, if one wants to move [to another school], you have to also move the end-to-end connection," he said. "A school system is dynamic, and it is hard to keep up with people and where they go. Multiply this by 58 schools, and you have a nightmare."

With voice over IP, teachers can move and retain the same number. "[Voice over IP] is an important way for us to go because of mobility and ease of maintenance," Porter said.

BellSouth has targeted the education market because increasing student learning through technology is critical to the country's economic well-being, said Frank Barber, director of K-12 industry marketing for BellSouth.

Areas driving technology into the schools include the increased emphasis on student achievement; keeping schools safe by having the lines of communication open; teacher shortages; and increased involvement in the community.

One Atlanta school district was short 230 teachers, and in the next two years, the country will demand 2 million teachers, Barber said. "We want to play a part in helping address this issue. When we improve communication between the school, the community and the home, achievement goes up," he said. "All of this underlines our belief in going forward with this network; it is mission-critical for the schools."

BellSouth will install and maintain the network. Although the carrier will monitor the nework 24 hours a day, a suite of monitoring tools will allow a Jackson Public School network manager to monitor the network, checking capacity from a desktop computer.