Industry Forums → Wireless Service Providers > Anyone service a school?

Anyone service a school?

I have a meeting with the business manager from a local school this week that has copper still from ATT, just a few bonded T1. Expensive, slow, and down all the time it seems.

The other schools have fiber from my same fiber provider, but this school is almost 10 miles of fiber away from the school/fiber.

The plan is for me to be the middle man, serving the same fiber to the school, via my wireless link, and get them off this fiber.

Anyone do any work for a school?

nope, but that sounds like it could be a nice little contract. I'd definitely go licensed link. and offer the option for redundancy.

If I didn't go licensed, setup 2 links and combine them (2 different frequencies) or at least give them the option for a higher fee

Ah yes licensed would be the way to go.

The school is about .5 miles from my POP in the country (my silo). They have LOS to my silo of course, but not directly to my fiber tap 6 miles away into the city.

Would you dojust the licensed link to my silo? Or their own entire link directly to my fiber tap in the city? (4 radios total)

I could do their own link directly, both licensed, and for redundancy, they would switch over to my current link.

I am trying to find what they currently pay for service there, it is all public information within the school budget, but I'd rather know before going to the meeting rather than asking him what they pay. Anyone have a ball park figure?

What state are you in? I work in IT for K12 now, but our Fiber links are subsidised heavily by the state if we go with certain providers. Chances are if they are still on T1's, it's 4 figures a month.

Wisconsin. I would assume its well into the 4 digits.

I previously paid $1,200/m for 4 T1s from ATT in the city limits. Getting that or more, 8+ miles out of the way would be plenty more.

Either way, tons of room for me to work with to make it profitable as well as get them some real speed.

My daughter goes to this school, and since the beginning of the school year they have had issues with the internet there, with it not working. One of which some some RC testing they had to do which was not working.

I constantly see ATT working on the T1 repeaters that go out that way.

Defiantly something we can improve on.

My daughter goes to this school, and since the beginning of the school year they have had issues with the internet there, with it not working. One of which some some RC testing they had to do which was not working.

I constantly see ATT working on the T1 repeaters that go out that way.

Defiantly something we can improve on.

I serve a small school. It is 4 hops from my fiber POP. They are getting 15Mbit for 60 kids. They had 4 bonded T1's before. We placed a managed router (Mikrotik 750) running OSPF with dual upstream routes out of their building. I connect to two of my towers and they have only been down due to my OSPF getting fouled up.... (If it ain't broke, don't fix it).

How long from initial contact to changed over, done deal?

How long did you operate both the T1s and the new feed before your completely transitioned?

I'm in education IT.

What's the enrollment at this school? I have one with about 400 enrollment and I just disconnected 2 T1s 8 miles out in the sticks and they were $1k/mo for both. We moved to a 50m fiber circuit for the same price. Coming from 3mbit, 10 would have been sufficient if managed propertly but we weren't looking to save money.

Reliability is key here especially if they are pushing VoIP over the connection (we do 40 phones on ours).

We service a school and are talking/working with several others. Most have asked for quotes from 15/15 up to 100/100. All are near our fiber though.
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That wasn't the response from the OP. I was asking what the enrollment was for the OP's project.

Viper: does your school have wifi for the students?

Yes, but they don't use it in this building at this time due to prior lack of bandwidth. Because this is a new circuit they just haven't realized what they have yet. Other campuses with fiber see much higher utilizations.

They hover around 200 students for enrollment.
The meeting got pushed back til next week.

Look into erate as well. Can be a huge benefit to a provider.
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