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Bandwidth Grows Along With Funding Concerns

By: Diane Rapley

1/1/2009

About ADS 2008

America's Digital Schools
America's Digital Schools 2008: The Six Trends to Watch surveyed over 350 school districts on the key technology factors driving change in our schools today. This highly regarded report by Jeanne Hayes of The Hayes Connection and Tom Greaves of The Greaves Group, the second in the ADS series, provides insights into trends in 1:1 computing, learning-management systems, online assessment, student devices, interactive whiteboards, and internet bandwidth. More information is available here.

Unfortunately, many districts may be limiting their purchase of internet-based tools until a solution is found. With bandwidth constrained for the next several years, vendors need to build applications that can adapt to variable-quality and variable-speed networks, as well as ensure that adequate bandwidth is verified at the point of sale to avoid customer dissatisfaction down the road.

The marketing and selling of bandwidth to schools has huge potential, but today there are few school-specific offerings. Vendors can help customers look into innovative strategies such as "burstable bandwidth," whereby schools contract with their ISP for a specified amount of bandwidth, with the ISP agreeing that during short periods of peak usage the bandwidth will increase. It will be important to help customers understand their bandwidth needs and help them identify solutions.

Broadband Knowledge
To learn more about broadband issues affecting education, visit the Broadband Knowledge Center, a project of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), with the backing of several corporate sponsors. The Broadband Knowledge Center provides access to research, white papers, surveys, and other reports on the state of broadband in education, as well as links to broadband resources. cosn.org/broadband


Diane Rapley has held senior positions in K-12 marketing for more than 20 years, focusing on brand management, messaging, marketing communications and marketing/sales planning.