July 21, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT:
Karen P. Powell, Public Relations Manager
SkyLine Membership Corporation
336-982-3800, ext. 6117
Karen.powell@SkyLine.org

Ashe School System Upgrades to a Fiber-based Wide Area Network
WEST JEFFERSON, N.C.— With the upgrade to a fiber-based Wide Area Network (WAN), Ashe County Schools is laying the groundwork now to ensure that students and teachers will have immediate access to learning opportunities and resources through the Internet and to other technologies of the future. The school system worked with SkyLine Membership Corporation’s wholly-owned subsidiary, SkyBest Communications, on the project, which was completed recently. The road to a more robust network to access the Information Highway started several years ago when the school system first embarked on a plan to build a Wide Area Network. Through a copper-based WAN built by SkyBest, the entire school system--which included five elementary schools, the middle school, the high school, the alternative school and the central office in Jefferson--could be networked. The copper WAN originally provided each of these locations access to download speeds of up to 2 Mbps (megabytes per second) and upload speeds of up to one Mbps.

Ashe School System Upgrades Network to Fiber Ina Cox, Director of Technology and Personnel with Ashe County Schools, worked with SkyBest Business Communications Consultant Bill Brock on the WAN project for the school system.

“ The Board of Education has been very proactive in wanting us to have technology services, and we feel that broadband will open doors for many future applications and expansions,”
said Ina Cox, Director of Technology and Personnel with Ashe County Schools. Through the initial WAN project, Ashe has become one of a handful of school systems to have Internet connections in every classroom of every school in the county. There are currently 1,200 computers connected to the county-wide WAN. “ Our goal as educators is to prepare students for the future and to be thinkers and learners. Through this technology, you can teach any thing at any moment, and if a child thinks of something and his or her interest is piqued, you can open up the world to that child,” she said.

As more services and instructional resources become available through the Internet and as schools need to communicate and exchange information and resources internally, Cox realized that capacity would be an ongoing concern. “We have been able to communicate and share files and programs between the schools that have benefited both teachers and students in the classroom,” Cox said. “As use of our network increases, so will the need for greater capacity to transfer more data and information.”

In this photo, Ashe County High School Tech Specialist Bob Calhoun (third from left) and Data Technician David Holman (second from right) are shown connecting fibers for the new network. Also pictured are SkyLine Network Operations Manager Robbie Farmer (far right), who engineered the project, and School Tech Specialists Amy Walker and Kevin Jones (at left).

A few months ago, SkyLine Chief Technology Officer Jimmy Blevins and Business Communications Consultant Bill Brock, both of whom worked with the school system on the original copper WAN project were discussing SkyLine’s current plans to deploy fiber to the premise (FTTP). FTTP is a framework of advanced communications technology that will deliver voice, video and high-speed data services over a single fiber optic line to the customer’s location. “Fiber is not new to SkyLine,” said Blevins. “We’ve been placing fiber into our network since the late 1980s. SkyLine established several fiber optic rings to increase capacity and create redundancy, and more recently, we’ve extended fiber to most of our remote facilities. The final step in this process is to take fiber to the customer premise and by doing so, we can deliver much greater bandwidths of data, video or other next-step technologies to the customer,” he said. Fiber will provide SkyLine and SkyBest customers with access to nearly limitless bandwidth and address any new communications offerings or bandwidth needs for many years.

“ We had a lot of success with the original copper WAN project with the school, so we realized almost immediately that as we plan the build-out of fiber to this area, the school system would benefit greatly by upgrading to fiber,” said Brock. “With a large application like the school system which encompasses multiple locations, we know that it will always need more capacity,” he said. Cox agreed. “As we’ve grown and as our teachers and students become more in tune to technology, their use of the Internet has increased dramatically,” she said. “We were aware of SkyLine’s long-range plan involving fiber, and I couldn’t think of any other proactive group in the county to deploy such a service. Having a company that provides local service and a working relationship in the past were key considerations in our plans for this project. “As the use of and reliance on technology increases for our entire school system, we knew that having immediate technical and service support also would be critical,” she said.

SkyBest utilized over 50 miles of fiber cable to finalize the WAN project, and also installed content filtering hardware equipment, which offers aggressive content filtering and virus protection for the schools. Each school has a direct connection to SkyBest's Internet POP (Point of Presence), and can transmit speeds through this network of up to one Gbps (gigabyte per second), which equals 1,000 Mbps (megabytes per second). "The WAN projects have eliminated any previous bottleneck challenges by having a direct connection to each school, so now, all schools have basically the same degree of download speeds," said Blevins.

The many benefits and savings afforded by a fiber-based WAN include centralized application servers which can provide more programs to distribute to all schools, including Publisher, Front Page, Adobe Acrobat Reader and more. "This alone will be a tremendous help to the school system’s technical staff, who previously would have to load programs and do more troubleshooting at all seven locations when students or teachers would have problems opening attachments,” Cox said. “ Now, as these programs evolve, the updates can be made from the server for all seven locations." By having a server-based application, students in a computer lab from any school will be able to use the program at the same time. Successmaker, a reading and math assessment and tutorial program is another server-based application available to all the schools. From e-mail to videoconferencing, each school will have equal access to nearly limitless bandwidth.

Through the first WAN project and this latest upgrade, the school system qualified for special funding through the E-Rate program. SkyLine Data Technicians installed a Gig Ethernet switch at each of the seven locations to dramatically strengthen the school system’s Internet backbone to support future technologies, including video and other data services.

Administratively, the school system is trying to become less paper-intensive. "Some of our accounting functions for all the schools can now be transmitted electronically, and the new student management application to be implemented in the fall of 2006 will allow schools to move student transcripts electronically when they transfer from school to school or from the school system to college," Cox said. Other new enhancements will include an electronic, systemwide grade book for the elementary schools, more classroom Web sites and greater accessibility to home-bound services for injured or critically ill students who have to miss school on a limited basis. School Superintendent Donnie Johnson says that technology is making a dramatic impact on the quality of education now and in the future. "Over the last several decades, the traditional classroom had a more controlled environment where students would gather in a room, and the teacher would
shut the door and proceed to teach, but now, the door is open to additional ways of reaching students, and the future will include more online instruction and virtual classrooms," he said. "That's why redundancy and the strength of our network are so essential. In deploying fiber to homes and businesses, SkyBest is doing a lot for the community as a whole to encourage entrepreneurs, to bolster our infrastructure and to effect the economic growth of Ashe County in a very positive way," Johnson said.

The school system received funding discounts for this project through the E-Rate program. E-rate, also known as the Schools and Libraries Universal Service Support Mechanism, provides discounts to assist most schools and libraries in the United States to obtain affordable telecommunications services and Internet access. The Schools and Library Division is an independent not-for-profit corporation established as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 with the express purpose of providing affordable access to advanced telecommunications services for all eligible schools and libraries, particularly those in rural and economically disadvantaged areas. All telecommunications carriers that provide interstate telecommunications services-- including SkyLine and SkyBest-- are required to contribute to universal service support mechanisms. Contributions are based on the carriers’ interstate and intrastate end-user telecommunications revenues. Schools, libraries, and health care providers as well as residential and rural customers are the primary universal service beneficiaries.

“ If it weren’t for E-Rate, we would be several years behind in utilizing technology in the classroom,” Cox said. The level of E-Rate discounts is based on a school’s or library’s level of economic disadvantage and its location in an urban or rural area. A school's level of economic disadvantage is defined by the percentage of its students eligible for either a free or reduced price lunch under the national school lunch program. SkyLine’s Bill Brock, who has worked with Cox on both projects, said that Ashe County is one of the most active school systems in the region to apply for these special discounts. “For several years, Ina has been very diligent in the pursuit of E-Rate funds to offset the schools’ costs for basic telecommunications services, Internet services and now, the WAN projects.”