Meeting of the Board of Regents | March 2010

SUMMARY

Issue for Discussion

An update on current statewide initiatives to provide sufficient broadband access to all school buildings in New York State.

Reason(s) for Consideration

        Implementation of policy.

Proposed Handling

This item will come before the EMSC Committee for discussion in March 2010.

Background Information

State Mapping.  The federal stimulus legislation requires each state to develop a map showing broadband capacity across the state. The State Office of Cyber-Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination (CSCIC) is the lead agency for the broadband mapping program in New York, and received $2.5 million total from the broadband stimulus program. This funding supports broadband data collection and mapping over two years, and broadband planning over five years. CSCIC is working with broadband providers to aggregate data on broadband availability in the State and to map the “backbone” infrastructure connection points.

As part of this effort, CSCIC is collecting data on the broadband capabilities of “community anchor institutions”, which include schools, libraries, municipal buildings, correctional facilities, and hospitals, among others. The State Education Department is contributing to this mapping effort by providing broadband data for K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and libraries. CSCIC is required to submit its first map to the Federal Communications Commission by March 31, 2010, and the map is to be updated every six months. This map will be very valuable to State Education Department staff for identifying gaps in broadband coverage for USNY institutions.

School Capacity.  A bandwidth of 100 megabits per second (100 mbps) is a recognized minimum standard by the Regional Information Centers (RICs) and the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). The RICs have recently collected data on which school buildings meet this standard by region, along with reasons why a particular building does not meet the standard.

Approximately 86 percent of school buildings meet this minimum standard. The remaining schools do not have this capacity primarily due to geographic location (e.g., mountainous or rural areas) and the expense of a large initial capital investment to build broadband infrastructure to the surrounding community. The costs to fully connect a school building at 100 mbps can range from as little as a few hundreds dollars to almost $5,000 per month, depending in part on location and current infrastructure. Further data from the RICs will be presented in a future Regents item.

Within the “Big 5” city school districts, different connectivity levels were found.  The Buffalo Public Schools are connected through the regional broadband network provided by WNYRIC, with a system-wide capacity of 1 gigabyte, exceeding the minimum standard. In the Syracuse City School District, Verizon connects the district into the Syracuse Metronet. They subsequently work with Time Warner Cable to purchase less expensive internet access. Syracuse school buildings have 1 gigabyte of bandwidth to their locations.

Next Steps

Department staff will continue to update the Regents on broadband capacity and access statewide, and share the results of the mapping initiative with the Regents at a future meeting.

Attachment A: Sites with Less than 100 mbps by RIC

Attachment B: Number of Sites Connected at Various Speeds under 100 mbps by RIC

Attachment A: Sites with Less than 100 mbps by RIC

Attachment B: Number of Sites Connected at Various Speeds under 100 mbps by RIC