Honorable Theodore Kulongoski
Governor
State of Oregon
254 State Capitol
Salem, Oregon 97310
Dear Governor Kulongoski:
I am writing to call your attention so that we might avoid a missed opportunity. The Rural Broadband planning process is developing plans to submit a federal stimulus grant without a crucial connection to schools. If we don't factor in the schools needs in this application Oregon will wind up with fiber in rural areas that the schools are not able to connect to. Specifically, there is no subsidy provision for schools to connect to and then distribute the new bandwidth. We have a limited window of time to impact this application, so I am asking for you to ask your staff to work with mine to try and resolve this issue.
The Service provider's plan has been submitted to your office and there is no consideration of what it will take (about $11 million) in the application for schools to become long term paying customers. The NTIA application planners will only factor in school costs if you direct them to.
As we move forward with the Rural Broadband Application from your office to the NTIA, I am concerned about how a school will be able to connect, and then use the new network infrastructure in rural Oregon. This is a critical piece of the ARRA Rural Broadband Application that is not on the table for discussion at this point.
The applications that were submitted by the Oregon Telecommunications providers only cover the fiber and long haul wireless builds that would bring the Internet to the outside wall of a school building. This will not allow the 350 schools in Oregon who have no broadband today to access the infrastructure and then use the infrastructure that sits outside their door. These 350 schools that have never had broadband, and not budgeted for the installation and internal networking, will not be able to take advantage of this for years without a portion of the Governor’s Plan dedicated to those two items. The schools will need funds to access the broadband. This will require $11,470,000 in installation and network equipment for classrooms to have basic access to the new Internet infrastructure. Without a fund being created as part of the Application to the NTIA for schools we will have infrastructure with no customers.
When a school becomes a customer to the telecommunications service provider there are two components that a customer gets charged:
• The first is a one-time installation charge, which will be about $2,100 for a school to become a customer. This get’s the fiber pulled through the wall and terminated on a device.
• The second is the monthly recurring cost, which will be around $600 per month for a 10Mb connection, which is the baseline all schools need. Schools will be able to pay the monthly fee because the minimal network connections they have today cost about the same. The increased bandwidth will cost the about the same because he ARRA Funds will eliminate the fiber build costs for a Telco provider to reach a school.
Then a school has to deliver the Internet connection to the places where they can use it inside a school. These are the connections to the computer labs and classrooms where students are taught and take the online assessments required by federal law. This requires internal networking equipment that they do not have today. The least expensive and most effective solution is wireless. These costs are factored into the $11.4m figure above.
This figure also includes the potential equipment savings that the ccelerate Oregon Public Private Partnership is working towards. The total cost without these savings would be much higher. A cost Oregon could not afford even with the ARRA Broadband funds.
We are only three weeks away from the signing of the Memorandum Of Understanding for education cost avoidance. This MOU is a nonbinding agreement for Oregon that we can use to promote the public private partnerships encouraged by your Office. The districts will realize the savings directly.
These funds and the network build out will bring broadband to 106,777 students, 15,498 educators and 350 schools. Without schools being provided with the installation costs, minimal School network and secure wireless equipment, they will not be able commit to becoming the long-term consumers.
Without anchor tenants like schools, the Telco’s cannot afford to provide the additional community services to health care providers and small businesses envisioned by the our joint planning to date.
Sincerely,
Susan Castillo
Superintendent of Public Instruction
