CENIC provides essential funding for “last mile” relief to twenty-eight California school districts

Los Alamitos, CA - April 1, 2002: In an effort to defray the cost to K-12 schools and districts for a high-bandwidth ‘last mile” connection to the CalREN-DC network, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) has announced its intent to make awards totaling $1.4 million to 28 school districts. The awards will be used to establish or extend school networks to connect to the CalREN-DC network and the commodity Internet at speeds of T-1 or better.

Beginning in 2001, the State launched the Digital California Project (DCP) by providing funding to extend CENIC’s ultra broadband CalREN network infrastructure to all 58 counties in California to enable the K-12 public schools to connect. The goal of DCP is to help teachers and students gain access to a rich array of learning and information resources on the network.

The CENIC “last mile” program was announced in November 2001. It is one effort to address the major challenge of ensuring that all the school sites throughout California have high bandwidth connectivity, T-1 or better, to CalREN-DC and the commodity Internet. A study, soon to be released by CENIC, found that over 23 percent of California’s nearly 9000 school sites lack this level of connectivity, generally accepted as necessary to take full advantage of on-line resources in the 21st century.

CENIC’s “last mile” grants to the 28 school districts will help defray the expenses associated with network connection from these school districts and schools to one of the 80 county-based node sites on CalREN-DC. The funding for this program comes from CENIC’s partnership in the California Teleconnect Fund and the federal E-Rate program.

CENIC received more than 120 applications, and with the help of volunteer reviewers throughout the State’s K-12 community, narrowed the field to 62 finalists. The DCP Program Steering Committee approved 28 awards.

Tom West, CENIC’s president, noted that “having read all 28 proposals recommended by the evaluation committee, I am excited about the magnitude of impact this modest investment will make. Over 200,000 students at nearly 200 sites will benefit.”

“Through its ’last mile‘ program, CENIC will provide school districts with the resources to overcome the final hurdle in establishing or extending their network connectivity to CalREN-DC and the commodity Internet. However, this is just the beginning. While this program cannot solve the ’last mile‘ challenge for all schools in California, it can help,” said Dave Meaney, the DCP’s Program Steering Committee vice-chair and County Superintendent, Sacramento County.

The funds will allow each school district to select the best solution to fit their specific last mile challenges - some will build microwave systems, some will install fiber connections, and some will pay telecommunications providers for higher bandwidth connection to CalREN-DC. In the case of Lake County all 19 school sites will be able to connect at T-1 as a result of its grant.

Public K-12 school systems and county offices of education were eligible for this first-of-a-kind award program. The first round of funding will be made available to the awardees in June 2002. This will enable the schools to implement their solutions over the summer months.

Last mile funding is critical to enable schools and districts to connect at T-1 or better to the nearest CalREN-DC nodes, i.e., the central access sites for high-capacity connectivity. This enriched connectivity will provide teachers and students access to newly- emerging instructional and learning resource on CalREN-DC and the commodity Internet.

CENIC is a not-for-profit corporation formed by the California Institute of Technology, the California State University, Stanford University, the University of California, and the University of Southern California to facilitate and coordinate the deployment, development, and operation of a set of seamless and robust advanced network services. The CENIC Associates program offers qualified companies the opportunity to collaborate with CENIC in pursuit of the goal of providing the most advanced network services for research and education. Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, SBC/Pacific Bell and the University and Community College System of Nevada are CENIC’s Associate Partners.

CalREN-2 is the first project of CENIC, founded in 1997 by California’s major research and academic universities. CalREN-2 performs at unprecedented speeds of over 1000 times faster than the commercial Internet. CENIC operates CalREN-2 for qualified public and private sector institutions for research and learning purposes. CalREN-2 is California's segment of the national Internet2 initiative and is partially funded by the National Science Foundation.

In the 2000-2001 Fiscal Year, the State of California provided funding for the Digital California Project (DCP), which is CENIC’s second project. The target of the DCP is the development of a cohesive and seamless high-speed statewide education network interconnecting K-12 schools and institutions of higher education in California.

More information about CENIC and its Associates program can be found at www.cenic.org.