In November of this past year, I introduced the idea of forming a committee to discuss the possibility of creating a VERY large fiber network to join all of the ESC 11 districts into a WAN type environment. The idea was tossed out to the TAC members and within less than two weeks, we were not forming a committee as much as we were pursuing the project for this year!
After several months of RFPs, planning meetings, discussions, board presentations and LOTS of paperwork, we are submitting our forms to USAC to seek funding for a multi-million dollar project that will span 43 of our districts with 51 connections during Phase 1. This is one of the largest projects ever tackled by the ESC and has garnered attention from across the state. Hopefully our hours upon hours of planning will be put into action to create an environment across our region that breaks down any barriers for student and teacher connectivity.
Oh yeah…AND we will have 200Gb of Internet Access coming into our building to serve our districts. Plenty of bandwidth for all!
More to come I am sure…
