Education

FCC’s Emergency Connectivity Funds Ineligible for School and Library Self-Provisioned Networks

The FCC’s May 10 order said schools and libraries could not use connectivity funds to build self-provisioned networks.

Published

3 years ago

May 28, 2021

Jericho Casper

Photo of John Windhausen, Executive Director of Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition

Closing the homework gap has been a top priority for Federal Communications Commission acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel. She has a long track record advocating for Wi-Fi-enabled school buses, lamenting viral images of school children completing homework in fast food parking lots, and making the case that no child should be left offline.

At the onset of the pandemic, she pledged to use her influence at the agency to fight to increase the flexibility of the E-Rate program, saying “every option needs to be on the table.”

When the American Rescue Plan Act established the Emergency Connectivity Fund in March, a $7 billion program to connect students and library patrons to the Internet at off-campus locations, Rosenworcel had an opportunity to follow through on those promises.

She could have seized the moment to steer the program in the direction of allowing schools and libraries to build, own, and operate their own school and community networks (what the federal government refers to as self-provisioned networks). Many schools serving areas with poorly connected students already do this, but without much help from the E-rate program.

But when the rules on how to spend the money were finalized on May 10th, the FCC’s Report and Order declared that schools and libraries could not use Connectivity Funds to build self-provisioned networks, but instead could only use the funds to purchase Wi-Fi hotspots, modems, routers, and connected devices, such as laptop computers and tablets.

The one exception in which schools and libraries can use Connectivity Funds to build self-provisioned networks is in “areas where no service is available for purchase,” based on data self-reported by private ISPs.

The Report and Order indicates the agency was not convinced allowing schools and libraries to build their own networks with the funds would be consistent with the goals Congress intended for the program, as the language in the Rescue Plan states that the Connectivity Fund is limited to the purchase of eligible equipment or advanced telecommunications and information services, as defined here.

What’s striking about that FCC interpretation is that it is completely at odds with what the Biden Administration has been espousing in the American Jobs Plan: that building publicly-owned community networks and investing in future-proof infrastructure are a crucial part of closing the digital divide. This FCC decision is a recipe for cutting students off from broadband Internet access as soon as Congressional appropriations run out rather than using those funds for solutions that will operate sustainably into the future.

Not Trying to Rock the Big Telco Boat

When the Connectivity Fund was first introduced, smaller Internet Service Providers, public interest groups, and education advocates petitioned the FCC to allow for the federal funds headed to schools and libraries to be eligible for use to build school and community networks.

The Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition; the American Library Association; and the Consortium for School Networking all found that self-provisioned networks are the most cost-effective way to permanently close the homework gap. They advocated for giving schools and libraries the most flexibility to spend these dollars and maintained that local administrators are best positioned to decide how to bridge gaps in connectivity.

Instead, the Connectivity Fund is now set to give limited remote learning funds to the same corporate ISPs that gave rise to the homework gap in the first place. The program gives a strong preference to funding hotspots provided by existing wireless mobile service providers, mainly AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. (In fact, AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink all lobbied the agency to disqualify [pdf] self-provisioning from being eligible for ECF support.)

The agency has also announced that the program will be forward-looking; therefore, lower priority will be placed on reimbursing schools and libraries for equipment purchased over the past year to expand existing networks or build new networks to serve students and library patrons.

E-Rate is a program that passed with support from big telcos because these monopoly providers have always been a prime beneficiary of the program. Any provision allowing ECF funds to be used on self-provisioned networks would eat away at what has been a guaranteed government income stream for these private ISPs.

There has been an open petition with the FCC, since before Ajit Pai was chairman, to permanently allow schools and libraries to be able to use E-Rate funds to build their own networks where it is cost-effective. If Rosenworcel wanted to permanently enact this change, and allow for schools and libraries to deploy more innovative, long-term and cost-effective technologies, she could have pushed to close that petition, and call for commissioners to vote on the issue. But with the FCC evenly split between Democratic and Republican Commissioners, it seems Rosenworcel is making a calculated decision to not rock the boat, challenging what has long been the status quo in a regulator that is frequently accused of having a revolving door with the industry it is supposed to regulate.

Self-Provisioned Networks Connecting Students Across the Country

At the onset of the pandemic, many local school administrators across the country scrambled to connect students to the Internet. In the process, those efforts suggested that self-provisioned broadband networks are a reliable and cost-effective way to connect students at home.

In Salt Lake Valley, Utah, technology supervisor for the Murray City School District, Jason Eyre, pioneered the construction of a private LTE network using CBRS spectrum the district obtained in 2019. Within four months (between January and April 2021), Eyre had engineered a network using approximately $77,000 of CARES Act funding to cover a 3-mile square home to many low-income students in the district. (District analysis showed that 13 percent of students did not have access to service from any existing ISPs.)

In one of SHLB’s ex parte filings to the FCC, Eyre explained that the private LTE network was a much more cost-effective solution than using hotspots from traditional wireless providers. The money he would have spent to purchase hotspots, which require a monthly service fee of $40/month, was enough money instead to build the private LTE network which will last for at least five years.

Similarly, a school district in California’s Central Valley, Lindsay Unified School District, found that deploying a community network in partnership with local government was by far the most cost-effective solution to get all students online.

LUSD initially considered using hotspots, but quickly discovered that recurring monthly subscription fees would cost the district almost $1 million annually to connect 2,000 students. Additionally, the signal strength hotspots provided were too irregular to support successful remote learning in the rural, agricultural community.

The district opted for an alternative solution in 2015 to “connect 75 percent of student homes using a meshed network of Wi-Fi access points mounted on schools, city property, and, as needed, student homes,” report Michael Calabrese and Amir Nasr for New America. The feasibility of the community network was demonstrated and LUSD moved to extend the network to more students by installing access points on all school buildings.

Finally, three years ago in Boulder Valley, Colorado, Andrew Moore (Chief Information Officer of the Boulder Valley School District) launched a wireless network to connect students at home with the help of a local ISP. “After the pandemic began last March, the BVSD expanded its TV White Space pilot program, called ConnectME, extending it beyond a few schools in Lafayette and Boulder to every single school in the district,” reports New America. BVSD was able to construct and expand the network without any E-Rate or ECF support.

The New America report documents still more examples of school districts using innovative solutions to connect students at home, including efforts in San Jose, California; Council Bluffs, Iowa; Maryland; and Texas.

The Hotspot Experience

Even if hotspots were a more cost-effective solution to get students online, many school administrators have reported that the devices often fail to work in more rural and impoverished communities.

Though there are benefits to using hotspots, such as the mobility they allow for and the relative ease of the distribution process, there are many drawbacks to relying on the devices.

Hotspots operate over mobile LTE networks and the reliability of the connection, along with the download and upload speeds attainable, can vary greatly depending on the user’s distance from a cell tower, the number of people using the network, and an area’s geography, reports DigitalBridgeK-12.

In the experience of the Southern Oregon Education Services District – which serves a total of 53,000 students, in 13 school districts, living across 10,000 square miles – Coree Kelly, SOESD’s chief information officer told us, “hotspots are only working well in the same areas where you already have a wired-up connection. If you don’t have a wired-up connection available in the area, then the hotspots don’t operate well either.”

According to Kelly, each one of the 13 districts tried to use hotspots (mostly provided by Verizon and U.S. Cellular) to connect students at home, and each one experienced a degree of failure.

“We tried trading them around, we tried other carriers’ hotspots,” Kelly explained. “Every single district that tried hotspots had some percentage of failure, ranging anywhere from 100 percent failure in some of our smaller school districts [located in the mountains of Southern Oregon] to around 10 percent,” adding that “it seemed like it was really impoverished areas that the hotspots didn’t work.”

This FCC order may allow districts to build networks in those areas, but individuals in the region may have difficulty proving to the Commission’s satisfaction that there is no private solution, as most areas where the hotspots failed were reported to be served with DSL connections by Verizon on the National Broadband Map.

Kelly spent the first week of May, alongside SHLB’s executive director John Windenhausen, educating FCC Commissioners on the vast shortcomings of hotspots and urging them to give schools and libraries flexibility to use anticipated ECF funds. Kelly was initially hopeful that the school districts SOESD serves would be able to utilize the funds to build out their own networks and was deeply disappointed with the FCC’s final ruling.

“It looks like it’s going to be more of the same, not open to innovation,” Kelly said, referencing the final language of the ECF Report and Order. “Really this shouldn’t be a monetary conversation for the vendors or for the ISPs, this should be an equity conversation, and everybody should be receiving the same Internet. That’s definitely not the way it goes now, because higher poverty areas get the worst connections, and nobody is ever looking to them to upgrade.”

“We’re in education. We don’t care about profit or loss. We just want to give our children a quality education,” he added.

Kelly thinks it’s time the FCC took a different approach. “We need to do something drastically different. We’ve spent a long time up to this point, and still, with all of the subsidies and programs…we still don’t have the connections out there,” he said.

In the meantime, between this FCC ruling and the Treasury rules that discourage cities from building effective networks in areas that already have cable service, the Biden Administration has decided on its own terms to narrowly interpret statutes in ways that benefit the cable lobbyists and are at odds with their own statements regarding structural solutions to the America’s broadband woes.

Editor’s Note: This piece was authored by Jericho Casper with the Institute for Local Self Reliance’s Community Broadband Network Initiative. Originally published on MuniNetworks.org, the piece is part of a collaborative reporting effort between Broadband Breakfast and the Community Broadband Networks program at ILSR.

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Jericho Casper

Reporter Jericho Casper graduated from the University of Virginia studying media policy. She grew up in Newport News in an area heavily impacted by the digital divide and has a passion for universal access and a vendetta against anyone who stands in the way of her getting better broadband.

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Education

Fiber Industry Can Build Interest in Broadband Workforce By Catering to Student Interests: Experts

The BEAD program allows providers to use funds to deploy workforce development strategies.

Published

5 months ago

August 22, 2023

Teralyn Whipple

Photo of Amelia De Jesus of Wireless Infrastructure Association, Lesley Liarikos of Tower Systems, Brian O'Hara of NRECA, Joshua Seidemann of NTCA, Craig Thomas of the Broadband Forum, and Mark Boxer of OFS (left to right) and

ORLANDO, August 22, 2023 – The fiber industry can stimulate interest in the broadband workforce by engaging with college students on platforms they frequent, such as online gaming, said panelists at the Fiber Connect conference Tuesday.

Amelia De Jesus, vice president of workforce solutions at the Wireless Infrastructure Association, suggested that providers leverage the rising generation’s interest in virtual gaming and augmented reality to encourage them to engage in a career that they care about, namely the infrastructure that enables the applications that they use. She suggested that VR can be used to train new employees, and conduct drone inspections of broadband lines.

Fiber skillsets open a variety of other career opportunities for people entering the workforce, said Brian O’Hara, senior director of regulatory affairs at electric cooperative trade association NRECA. He said that providers can capitalize on this benefit to enhance their workforce efforts.

Once employees are trained and practiced in fiber technology and deployment, these skills can be used in many ways, O’Hara said, claiming that this will encourage young adults to be more engaged in learning these skills. He pointed to support for telehealth platforms, precision agriculture systems, schools, and hospitals, among other careers.

O’Hara recommended that providers educate the rising generation on the benefits of internet connection to provide them with a mission and purpose that can drive their career. He added that younger generations are environmentally conscious, which can be leveraged by providers by educating the next generation of workers on how broadband can reduce emissions, facilitate faster deployment of renewable energy, and provide a more efficient electricity grid.

The key point is that the industry encourages excitement in college students and help them develop core skillsets that can be taken anywhere they want, concluded O’Hara.

“States are depending on providers and operators to build out these networks,” added De Jesus, referring to the $42.5 billion set to be available to states for broadband builds in 2024 through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. For the first time in the history of the internet, providers have the money available to find and train employees to expand the workforce, she said. The BEAD program allows providers to use funds to deploy workforce development strategies.

There is no nationally trusted technician certification, especially for the more than 1,200 smaller fiber providers in the country, said Mark Boxer, technical manager for OFS, a fiber optic designer, manufacturer and provider. He warned that newer workforce knowledge is inconsistent and that industry memory of procedure is fading as previously deeper trained generations move on.

Experts have raised workforce shortages as a looming concern for coming BEAD-funded projects. Many have suggested various mechanisms to address the shortage, including hiring ex-convicts, developing apprenticeship programs, and engaging students at an earlier age.

Education

Students Should Limit Screen Time, Panel Hears

Experts suggest a combination of active activities and group projects.

Published

5 months ago

August 17, 2023

Teralyn Whipple

Screenshot of Eileen Belastock

WASHINGTON, August 17, 2023 – Students in K-12 and higher education should have a limited amount of screen time while enrolled in online courses, said digital education experts at a Broadband Breakfast Live Online event Wednesday.

Eileen Belastock, CEO of online education consulting firm Belastock Consulting, said that students do not learn well when they are looking at a screen. Children need more time off screen with tech free options to work on school projects, she said.

“Screen time is not good for students,” she said. “It lends itself to bullying, inappropriate conduct. I also think students don’t learn well when they’re looking at a screen. I think they need more personalized, off screen, tech-free projects to work on.”

Belastock suggested that educators have students conduct online research and engage in real life projects that will switch up their day and help them accomplish something new.

Jason Amos, director of communications at the National School Boards Association, added that educators can add variety into classrooms by assigning passive, active, individual, and group activities. “Sitting on a laptop for hours and hours and hours or sitting in a lecture for that long is not a great way for kids to learn,” he said. He said active group participation remotely can help engage students and provide “tremendous opportunity” for a greater educational impact on the students.

Amos added that it is a concern for how much time children are spending online and not interacting with their peers, especially because students are inclined to relax by playing video games or watching television.

While Charles Severance, clinical professor of information at University of Michigan School of Information, agreed, he added that technology can be more versatile for students enrolled in online courses. Educating technology can be with students while they are outside or on a walk, he said. He urged for educators to find new systems that cater to student’s needs.

Severance added that the biggest mistake in the country-wide push to move all classes in person is that it overlooks that some classes may be preferable online. Some classes do not need close interaction for students to be engaged in learning while others do, he said.

Experts said in March that digital learning is here to stay following the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that it “opened a door that can’t be closed again” in terms of technology’s role in education.

Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, or REGISTER HERE to join the conversation.

Wednesday, August 16, 2023 – Remote Education and Online Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned our world upside down, but it also ushered in a transformative era of education, wherein online learning has emerged as a powerful alternative avenue for academic development. The remarkable progress in virtual reality, metaverse, and artificial intelligence has been steadily dismantling traditional barriers to remote education, such as accessibility, efficiency, and engagement. Where does online learning go from here? How does technology factor into this field? Are there any pitfalls students, educators, and parents should be cautious of, particularly concerning online risks for children?

Panelists

Jason Amos, Director of Communications, National School Boards Association
Eileen Belastock, CEO of Belastock Consulting
Dr. Charles Severance, Clinical Professor of Information, University of Michigan School of Information
Erik Langner, CEO, Information Equity Initiative
Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

Jason Amos has more than two decades of experience in education policy and communications, including several years as a congressional staffer. Currently, he is the Director of Communications for the National School Boards Association, a non-profit organization representing state associations of school boards and member school districts. NSBA’s purpose is to ensure that each student everywhere has access to excellent and equitable public education governed by high-performing school board leaders and supported by the community.

Eileen Belastock is the CEO of Belastock Consulting and an EdTech Leadership Specialist with the Mass. Office of EdTech. As a former K12 CTO, she has championed safety and security, encouraged student agency, and supported students with equitable access to their education. She is also a published writer, a national keynote presenter, and the 2020 top 100 Ed-Tech Influencer and 2022 Edtech Digest Leadership Award finalist.

Erik Langner is the CEO of Information Equity Initiative (IEI), an international nonprofit organization committed to ensuring everyone, regardless of geography or income, has access to high-quality, digital learning resources. IEI partners with government agencies, broadcasters, content producers, and funders to provide curated digital content to homes and facilities that lack broadband via a technology called “Datacasting.” Langner has worked in public broadcasting for two decades and was previously a corporate attorney in New York City and San Francisco, and worked at the United Nations in Geneva. Langner received his law degree from Northwestern University and his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Charles Severance is a Clinical Professor and teaches in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He teaches over popular Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) including Python for Everybody – the most popular online programming course in the world on the Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn platforms. He is also a long-time advocate of open source educational technology and open educational resources to empower teachers. Previously he was the Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation and the Chief Architect of the Sakai Project. Dr. Severance has written several books including “Using the Google App Engine”, “Python for Informatics”, “High Performance Computing”, and “Sakai: Free as in Freedom.”

Drew Clark is CEO of Breakfast Media LLC. He has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing campaign for broadband data. As Editor and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media company advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.

WATCH HERE, or on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

As with all Broadband Breakfast Live Online events, the FREE webcasts will take place at 12 Noon ET on Wednesday.

SUBSCRIBE to the Broadband Breakfast YouTube channel. That way, you will be notified when events go live. Watch on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

See a complete list of upcoming and past Broadband Breakfast Live Online events.

Education

Anchor Associations Asking for Deadline Extension on Emergency Connectivity Fund Deployment

Associations say delays in getting fund approval and services/equipment means not getting full use of the program.

Published

9 months ago

April 6, 2023

Ahmad Hathout

Photo of SHLB Executive Director John Windhausen Jr.

WASHINGTON, April 6, 2023 – A duo of anchor institution associations has requested Wednesday that the Federal Communications Commission extend the deadlines to implement funding from the Emergency Connectivity Fund, in part citing delays in getting and deploying equipment and services.

The Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition and the Consortium for School Networking have asked for a year extension to June 30, 2024 for the first two funding rounds if the applicant received a decision on or after March 1, 2022, and a six-month extension to the aforementioned date for the third and latest round to implement money from the program intended to keep students connected to the internet when away from school. Their request asks to waive a section of the program rules that have set those current dates in stone.

According to the waiver request filed Wednesday, funding recipients have either received a decision letter “with a narrow amount of time” to use the funding prior to the current delivery dates or have yet to receive their application approval.

“Certain factors, such as the amount of time between when an applicant received its [decision or revised decision letter] and the service delivery date, combined with the time necessary for a recipient to order, receive, and distribute equipment and services once they are procured, could inhibit an ECF recipient from fully using their requested funding prior to the service delivery dates,” the waiver request said.

The duo added that “many applicants” wait to enter contracts for the equipment and services until they get funding approval. Those that put the cart before the horse may find themselves having to renegotiate certain terms, for example in the case where services or equipment prices increased by the time they get the funding notice, the request said, adding the anchor institutions have been up against “any remaining manufacturing and global supply chain issues” from the pandemic that are contributing to delays.

The organizations gave several examples of problems faced by the anchor institutions where they would not be able to provide the 12 months of services provided by the program, including size and availability increases of buses in Georgia adding additional deployment time and a California education office that had to coordinate with multiple programs that delayed deployment.

“In these cases, even an applicant that received its [funding letters] exactly twelve months prior to the current applicable service delivery date would not be able to provide a full twelve months of ECF-supported service,” the request said.

The waiver request said if the commission does not extend the delivery dates, applicants won’t be able to use all their award funding, which will mean the regulator will have spent less than the full amount appropriated by Congress.

“It would be a far better policy outcome for the Commission to extend the deadline and allow applicants to utilize the full amount of their awarded funding rather than opening a fourth application window to award the remaining dollars,” the duo said.

The FCC has allocated just over $6.6 billion of the $7.1 billion from the ECF program, as it has been making periodic funding decisions over the months.