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TuWay Provides Faster Internet Access for School District
New Providence School District
New Providence, New Jersey
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“The benefits go beyond the speed at which users can access research and e-mail. It improves their productivity, which leads to an overall better feeling about the school experience.”
Alex Menard, Manager of Information Systems
New Providence School District |
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Business Problem
The New Providence School District includes four schools and a separate building for the board of education. The school network includes approximately 440 personal computers, which approximately 2,129 students, 206 teachers, and 70 support staff utilize for various applications, e-mail, and Internet access.
During and before the 2001-2002 school year, students at the two elementary schools experienced slow performance when accessing the Internet for research projects. Teachers needed faster access as well to conduct research and access e-mail. While teachers and students at the high school/middle school benefited from a fractional T3 connection to the Internet, board of education staff members also experienced slow Internet access.
“The bottom line was that the ISDN connections from the buildings to the high school were not adequate for the large number of students and staff that used the Internet simultaneously,” says Alex Menard, manager of information systems for the New Providence School District. “They all needed more bandwidth.”
Menard considered increasing the bandwidth of the ISDN connections by switching to T1 connections for all the schools, but this would have cost about $2,100 per month—an ongoing, long-term expense for which the school district could not budget. Menard also considered running fiber-optic cables between the buildings, but this would have cost $150,000 plus the cost of associated electronics. This amount was significantly beyond what budget would allow.
Project Solution
Menard chose wireless LAN equipment from Agere because of the cost and excellent reviews for the product. The equipment would allow the school system to create a point-to-point, wireless-access solution with sufficient Internet access speed (bandwidth) for the elementary schools and board of education offices. “But engineering and implementation was another matter,” Menard says. “We wanted experienced professionals with the expertise to do the job.”
Through a third-party vendor, New Providence found out that TuWay Communications specializes in fixed-data wireless solutions and works with Lucent/Agere equipment on a regular basis. TuWay deploys wireless networks that allow organizations to use radio frequencies to send data from one device to another, at any time from anywhere. Depending on each customer’s needs, TuWay customizes wireless networks to include voice or data in a wide or small geographical area.
“TuWay immediately impressed me with the broad range of wireless projects that they had implemented,” Menard says. With wireless WANs, line-of-site is critical. Menard realized that the best signal for all the links between the buildings would require trimming trees. With the help of TuWay, he minimized the amount of trimming. This was critical because Menard needed the cooperation of local businesses and one residential homeowner. TuWay also impressed Menard with their professionalism, flexibility, and pricing. “TuWay offered a significantly lower price compared to one of the two other providers who gave quotes,” he says.
TuWay began installing the system at one elementary school and the board of education office just before the beginning of the 2002-2003 school year and had the system running within a month. The other elementary school had their system running by the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year (the school system needed to delay this portion of the project for logistical reasons).
Results
Following implementation of the TuWay solution, the Internet connections for the elementary school and the board of education office improved dramatically. “We immediately received positive comments from teachers and administration,” Menard says. “The benefits go beyond the speed at which users can access research and e-mail. It improves their productivity which leads to an overall better feeling about their work environment.”
Students and teachers can now properly conduct research for school projects and lesson plans. Teachers and support staff can also now access the Internet and their e-mail in a timely manner. At one location, bandwidth improved from 128Kbps to more than 2Mbps.
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