Subject: Dave Hughes on School wireless; long but inspiring
From: Glenn Ralston (gralston@in.net)
Date: Wed 17 Nov 1999 - 14:36:19 MET
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 08:36:19 -0500 From: Glenn Ralston <gralston@in.net> Subject: Dave Hughes on School wireless; long but inspiring
attached mail follows:
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 16:43:03 -0600 From: Dave Hughes <dave@OLDCOLO.COM> Subject: Re: Life in the clouds
> As for 55 million K-12 kiddies .... hmmmmm. That
> figure seems a bit on the inflated side to me,
The lowest number I have ever read is 52 million, over the past 4 years.
but for
> argument's sake, let's say you're right. Should
> everyone who uses a telephone -- regardless of how
> they use it -- be responsible for making certain that
> every K-12 kiddie in the country gets freebie access
> to the Internet? Seems to me that a significant
> portion of that 55-million niche group you're talking
> about probably has the financial resources (mom, dad,
> etc.) to logon without any "special" help from all the
> rest of us. As for those who don't, maybe we can work
> something out -- I'm all for helping people who REALLY
> need help.
'Significant portion' is a far cry from 'universal.' And one of the things
that made the US DIFFERENT from Europe in education was that EVERYONE in
the US is entitled to a FREE K-12 education - universal - no matter where
they live, no matter who they are, no matter what their parent(s) make. It
is crystal clear to me that EVERY K-12 kid has to, if they are to be
educated for the next century, have access to the internet at school and
when they do homework at home. Period.
And the only real obstacle to that is the cost of 'connectivity' between
the school and the kid's home. For if the school (and a very few have)
sets up dial up access to their OWN servers, it would take 1 business
phone line and modem for every 10 students - or in a 1,500 student high
school, about 150 $50 a month telco lines, or $90,000 a YEAR just to
subsidize SLOW 28.8 modem speed access to the school AND through its
connection to the Internet to the rest of the world. What school is going
to do that? And EVEN if they did, what percent of those parents you
cite will have a second phone line just so Johnny can use it to access his
homework assigment, hanging on the phone for an hour or more while his
brothers and sisters ALSO want to use the phone. (The telcos have figured
this one out. Just watch the ads where THEIR solution is just more phone
lines in the home. Yeah.)
If the school set up
>
> Someday, remind me to tell you the inside story about
> how the e-rate thing came about. For the time being,
> however, suffice it to say that this was not something
> that was designed to get into the pockets of every
> telephone-using citizen in the nation. Trust me on
> this.
>
Yeah, I'd like to hear the 'inside story' on how that ill conceived,
technogically backwards, poorly managed, money wasteful (rate payer money
wasted), telco enriching, non-universal, half assed e-rate program was
started. Because I ALREADY know the piss poor implementation of it. EVEN
after the White House staff told the FCC to listen to me about wireless
long before the e-rate rules were made, EVEN after the FCC staff asked me
for a one-to-many discussion of how no-licence wireless could be used to
solve the problems of 'universal' access by schools at the lowest possible
cost, and EVEN after I warned them that the issue of 'who is paying into
the USF fund would be raised, and I GAVE them the solution in the case of
radios - that the radio and microwave vendors could be compelled to
contribute X percent of the transation with the school, to the fund (the
FCC not only didn't listen to that they don't even get a nickle from the
Ethernet vendors, who are, nevertheless PAID from the USF fund, because
at the last minute the FCC idiots realized you can't put a school on the
Internet until the signal can reach the classroom, via routers, servers,
hubs and lans, NONE of which pay into the fund, but ALL are eligible to
take from it.
The ONLY FCC Commissioner who has a clue about what this technology,
vended now by over 100 companies (wanna talk about 'competition?') can do
to connect up those 55 million students and their 3 million teachers.
> As for computers and the 'Net being a crucial part of
> a modern education -- horsefeathers, I say! I realize,
> of course, that classrooms have changed a bit in the
> 100 or so years since I was in school, but give me a
> break! We're so pre-occupied these days with teaching
> kids how to surf the 'Net, we've lost perspective
> about the value of education.
You know why? Because damned near no teachers got their own degrees via
the net! As early as 1972, before most the people in this maillist even
KNEW there was interactive online networking (the Source and Compuserve) I
was teaching one, if not *the* first college credit course (a number of
scholars told me it was the first) entirely online, via the Source.
Electronic English, and I don't mean wordprocessing. Rigerous, SUPERIOR to
teaching the same course face to face. (I taught cadets at West Point, so
I know what I am talking about.)
Do we really want to
> create generations of cyber geeks whose communication
> skills are limited to computer keyboards and terminal
> screens? I agree that computer skills are important in
> today's work environment, but they're by no means the
> be-all-to-end-all skills one has to have in order to
> be a well-rounded, functional member of society. We
> spend far and away too much time now worrying about
> what it is that kids are seeing on the Internet, yet
> we turn right around and do everything in our power to
> encourage kids to use the 'Net.
If that the fault of the Internet? Or of teachers and
educators who don't know how to use it for education, AND
parents who haven't got a clue either?
> As for wireless ISPs paying into the USF -- Believe
> me, I empathize with your view, Dave. Still, if the
> FCC decides that ISPs are going to be subject to the
> access regime, and that wireless ISPs are going to
> part of that, too -- you WILL be forced to pay the
> toll.
The ONLY reason the Telcos want ISPs to be forced to pay 'access fees' is
because, out of their own incompetance and tardy arrival to the Internet,
Telephone companies now want to own it all. They have been crying in their
beer now for years how net users use switches more often than their voice
patterns were, and for longer times. They scream that they need MORE MONEY
to 'solve' that problem. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE THAT THE TELCOS WOULD SPEND
ISP ACCESS FEES ANY SMARTER THAN THEY HAVE THEIR OWN MONEY IN THE PAST!
The Rbocs are greedy idiots, showing the same characteristics of Dinasours
before going extinct. If they were just private companies, I would'nt
care. But so long as telephone companies are REGULATED MONOPOLIES, who RUN
TO GOVERNMENT TO LOCK IN THEIR PROFITS AND SUPRESS COMPETITION, then I'll
do everything I can to bypass them, take business from them, and use the
SAME law they do, the 1996 Telecom Act which called for 'Universal,
Technology Neutral, and Competitive' (they are none of the above) to stick
it to them.
If you were as knowledgable about what the e-rate can and cannot go for as
you imply you would know that schools may NOT use E-rate money to buy FCC
Part 15 radios, which, when connected BETWEEN school buildings across a
city, can link ALL classrooms to the main school building at T-1 speeds
and higher at ZERO monthly cost. Instead of the gouging they now get from
the telcos charging for the T-1s, AND all through the summer months when
school is out. Just call up the Networking guru of School District 20, in
Colorado Springs, who faced connecting up all 25 of his buildings to their
central building at T-1 speeds, not only to go to the outside net, but
also to give all classrooms access to the digital central library
resources. US West bid $1.5 MILLION to just connect them up, and THEN
$12,000 a MONTH forever to keep them up. Or $2.9 MILLION for the first 10
years. While a one man wireless company bid $601,000, connected up the
high schools at 10mbps and all the middle and elementary schools at 2mbps
- faster than T-1, with short range microwave, and spread spectrum no
licence radios. i.e. a hell of a lot faster (ever hear of the 'bandwidth
issue everyone at the FCC is running around in circles about?) than the
T-1s of US West. 10 year cost? $601,000! versus $2.9 Million. That was 5
years ago - and the system is running fine. And today ALL the school
buildings could be linked at 11Mbps with central radios costing $2,000 and
school-end radios costing $395 each!
Now you just pull out your little calculator and multiply THOSE economics
by the 16,000 school districts and 84,000 schools, AND 15,000 public
libraries in this country and figure out how much it would cost ONE TIME
to do it the way District 20 did it, rather than every school district in
the nation being forced to come back and ask for the SAME e-rate subsidy
EVERY YEAR to fill the pockets of the Telephone Companies, out of the
pockets of the Rate Payers! But only because of that one rule, prohibiting
districts from buying 1 time radios, microwaves, or even satellite
ground-stations, hundreds and hundreds of millions of rate payer money is
being pissed away UNNECESSARILY.
This was done BEFORE the e-rate out of their own school budget, from local
taxpayer money. IF they tried to do the same thing today they COULD NOT
USE E-RATE MONEY TO SAVE $2.3 MILLION of rate-payers money. Because the
FCC, in their idiocy, prodded by the Telcos, made the rule, which ONLY
enriches the Telephone companies.
By the SIMPLIST extension, using radios that can deliver higher bandwidth
to the student, teacher, home from the school, with the District
boundaries, tham the telcos can, and do it EVERYWHERE (which the telcos
cannot and will not) the problems of educational connectivity can be
solved at one stroke.
And IF the FCC was as 'concerned' - about the 'digital divide,' or
'have-nots' or 'rural or high cost' schools - about connectivity as the
number of crocodile tears they shed over it, they would take the bag off
their heads, smell the coffee, and see the possibilities in technologies
that could permit an HISTORIC shift from voice and data connectivity as a
'service' industry, to voice and data connectivity as a 'device' industry,
where all the money that now goes into recurring cost services over
ancient technologies, into devices that can deliver free connectivity
with present and future digital wireless technologies.
I don't know where you are coming from roger, but by your remarks I think
you have bought into the whole 'eternal Ma Bell and FCC' mindset that most
of the Lawyers of the FCC are in also, engaged in the Telephone Company -
Government perpetual incestuous Minuet inside the Beltway.
Dave Hughes
dave@oldcolo.com
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