Schools find their bandwidth is “gold”
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When Sprint Nextel announced plans for a high-speed wireless broadband network a few weeks ago, it teamed up with some giants of the tech and media industries, including Clearwire, Google and Time Warner Cable. But it was quietly riding on the back of our nation’s education system.
Jim Puzzanghera has the exclusive story about how the project couldn’t have happened without the nearly 1,400 public and private schools, including several across Southern California, that licensed their airwaves to the Sprint Nextel project. It’s been a windfall in this tough economy: The five Cal State campuses that operate the Calnet distance-learning consortium, for example, signed a joint 15-year deal with Sprint in 2006 worth $55.7 million to use about three-fourths of their airwaves.
Wait, schools own airwaves?
That’s right: It turns out that many schools received swaths of unwanted spectrum from the federal government to use for distance learning. Here’s more from Jim’s story:
For nearly 20 years, five California State University campuses in the Los Angeles area have banded together to broadcast live courses over public airwaves that were long ago set aside by the federal government for distance learning. It hasn’t been simple. The spectrum isn’t as good as commercial TV, and until the late 1990s it required bulky rooftop receivers that needed a clear line of sight to broadcast towers on Mt. Wilson or Modjeska Peak. But technological advances have made the airwaves easier to use -- and much more lucrative to hold. For Cal State Los Angeles, Long Beach, Dominguez Hills, Fullerton and Pomona, as well as schools and religious institutions around the country, holding a license to the spectrum as the wireless industry expands has been like finding a winning lottery ticket in a dresser drawer. ‘Our bandwidth . . . is gold,’ said Dr. Warren Ashley, director of the Center for Mediated Instruction and Distance Learning at Cal State Dominguez Hills.
Check out the full story.
-- Chris Gaither