The Cost of Connectivity
As the technology director for a small public school district, it's safe to say that I wear a lot of hats. While larger districts have separate positions for servers, desktop support, networking, and database management, I get the distinct pleasure of taking care of a lot of that stuff myself. Thankfully I have @iikrypticsii to help me out so I can focus on more of the administrative tasks.
Over the last couple of years I have been working on upgrading our fiber connections so that we can have a 10 gigabit backbone on our network. For all intents and purposes, we don't really need a 10Gb backbone. Most of the services we use in house are pretty low overhead and the online services we use probably don't even come close to filling the 1 Gb connection we get to our Internet Service Provider.
I'm getting close to retirement though and I would like to think that I left our district in a good place as far as future proofing. I have already been in talks with our ISP and they plan on upgrading their hardware this summer so that we can have a 10Gb connection to them.
Meanwhile, the final leg of our network that connects our main campus to one of our elementary schools is connected with a 1Gb point to point wireless solution. Those radios have been working great for years, but they are over ten years old and I know eventually they will start having issues. On top of that, the company that supports the radios is all the way down in Indiana, so when we do have issues, it's at least four to five hours before they can even be on site to diagnosis it. At just about nine miles away, this elementary school isn't too far, but also just far enough that running fiber is a significant undertaking.
The good news is, the Federal Communications Commission has a grant program to help schools and libraries pay for services like this. I went out to bid for "transport service" which is basically dark fiber strands that a company leases out to us. Actually, we got two bids for the service. They both had pretty similar pricing in terms of the monthly service, but the "build out" to bring the fiber into our building was about $5000 from one company and closer to $20,000 from the other company.
The high cost of the build out got me wondering what it might cost to just run our own fiber. That way we can skip the monthly fee since we own the fiber. I knew the build out cost was going to be more significant, but I wasn't prepared for it to be the $800,000 that the sole bidder quoted us.
For a number of reasons (I won't go into here), I decided that although we will have a monthly fee, transport service is probably the smarter way to go. It's still a lower monthly fee than we currently pay for our point to point solution and it will be full 10Gb.
Hence part of the reason for the title of this post. Connectivity is not cheap. I'm sure it doesn't seem like it personally either when you pay that monthly bill to the cable company or whoever you get your Internet service from.
Speaking of home Internet. There is a lot of uncertainty right now for another government program that provides discounted Internet service to people who are consider low income. It's a program that has been around for a while and I am not sure if this is still the case, but when it was implemented it was based on free or reduced lunch status for families.
I've been hearing news reports lately about how this program could be cut if the government doesn't pass some bill or extend some funding as early as next week.
It's pretty sad to think that in a day and age when so many services, programs, and necessities are dependent on the Internet, that it is still woefully unaffordable for the majority of people. It's time some changes were made at the top level. Changes that people have been fighting for over the past couple of decades.
We all need affordable Internet. If the school districts can't afford it then how can we ever expect the average consumer to.
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That's awesome. I wish that were the case here.
Wow! $800,000 is incredibly outrageous. Wired speeds are faster than wireless but at least the wireless program is still available for low-income folks. Great work you have been doing with the school. I worked in the business lab at the local community college for a semester and saw firsthand the level of hardware, software and man hours that go into running an effective and secure school network. It's no easy task to manage so I'm glad you have done well for your school. Thanks for sharing and hope you have a great day XD
Thanks, I appreciate it. This should end up being relatively low cost for us. I'm hoping the company can get the build out completed quickly and well. Yeah, I was a bit shocked by the close to $1m cost of running our own fiber. Especially over such a relatively short distance.
Unfortunately, the way things are going, it will be cut, along with more cuts to Medicare and other benefits to the poor, while meanwhile they will give another tax cut to the rich. They don't even try to lie about it these days with that nonsense about "trickle down economics", they just don't talk about it and ignore anyone in the media who brings it up. "Why another tax cut for the rich when the gulf between rich and poor is already greater than it has been at any time since the Gilded Age? Why cut social security when we are the ones who are paying for that?" Ignore them or call them a liberal who hates America.
Anyway, it sounds like you are doing a good job setting up things to be better for the future. Wish more people thought like you do!
I'm trying. Like I said, I don't know as though we will ever need this big of a pipe, but it will be there just in case. It's actually a bit surprising how little bandwidth we use for being a whole school district. Ever since I was a young adult I have always invested my money with the assumption that Social Security won't be around when I need it. Sad, but necessary.
Seems like you can pick two (and only two) from the following menu:
A: Cheap
B: Reliable
C: Fast
I use Starlink for my house. It is not perfect. My television doesn't particularly like it, and my TV providers get to thinking I live in LA where the uplink is. But it is reliable and fast.
Then, of course, comes the issue of trust for Elon and Starlink. My dealings with Starlink have been almost universally good and it's now been two years. Might that be a possibility for your satellite locations?
In this part of the world Starlink has brought internet to places that simply are too remote to have any other service. The Navajo Nation in particular.
I don't know if Starlink allows you to keep traffic on the same network. With the transport service or self provisioned fiber my network is basically flat. My desktops 14 minutes away can authenticate to the active directory server at my main campus. All without leaving my private network which I don't think would be possible with Starlink. I like the idea of Starlink though. I knew someone who was using Hughesnet back in the day and it was horrible!
It’s just like the cable providers. They all have you bent over. Or you can pay for 7-10 separate subscriptions and pay the same.🤦🏻
Indeed!
They do have this here, but from what I saw it is the bare bones minimum that you still pay for, but for a wee bit more you would get a much better package.
All the disparity in the costs you were gathering, it just makes you wonder.
It's pretty weak sauce over here too, but it's still high speed Internet and as someone who grew up with dialup, I don't think many people will complain!
Running fibers is really expensive... As is most hardware for that matter. It sounds like you have your work cut out for you before you retire. Those radios won't last forever, so it's nice there are federal programs to help out.
Congratulations on approaching retirement. Soon you'll have plenty of free time on your hands!
Yeah, I think leasing the bandwidth is going to be our best bet. It will only amount to a couple hundred dollars a month. Running the fiber would be nice, but then it's our problem to deal with breaks and stuff like that.
Do they price it at what they think you can afford? Services to businesses can cost more than to homes. I think I have 1gb at home now, but it's more than I really need.
I remember when we got a terminal at school that used an acoustic coupler to the local college computer. Only one person could use it at a time. How things have changed over 40 years.
Indeed they have changed. I think the excessive cost in this case can be chalked up to the several miles of fiber optic cable and the fact that they would have to underground bore most of it.
That will be expensive. The physical infrastructure is part of it, but I wonder what it really costs them once that is done. They keep putting my broadband price up, but I managed to negotiate it down a bit this time. I feel I've paid them a lot over many years.
That's nice, we used to be able to negotiate, but they don't have any of it anymore. It just is what it is and if you don't like it you can leave. Problem is, they offer the fastest speeds and the most uptime.
Those kind of speeds are amazing to have just not sure what kind of content the students start exploring if they have unrestricted access to those speeds and free access to the internet.
If everything has firewall and parental control the constructive possibilities are endless
There is a little law called CIPA that requires us to filter our connection. You can't surf unfiltered unless you breach the AUP and at that point it is a discipline issue, not a tech issue.
I thought about this a bit later yesterday.
$800,000 sounds outrageous until you consider that electrical feed service goes up from the base $1,000,000 per mile. My brother and I tried to interest anybody on putting solar on some property. The necessary 19 miles of line wrecked that idea.
Wow, that is crazy. I knew this was going to be expensive, but I was hoping it would be closer to $400k or so. I might have been able to swing that with some other grants.