Daviess County schools get really high speed Internet connections

Schools in the Daviess County School District are now all upgraded to a super-fast fiber-optic web connection, which the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer (subscription) says is 200 times faster than the three T1 lines each school formerly used.

As I recall, T1 lines run at about 1.5 Megabytes per second, so the new connections are on a whole other plant from the cable modem and digital subscriber telephone system connections most households use for ‘high speed’ Internet service.

Of course, with digital learning becoming far more common in our schools, and with each child using a computer to access the web needing the equivalent bytes per second that a household would need, the requirement for fiber-optics is more apparent.

Sadly, fiber connectivity isn’t available everywhere in Kentucky, which means that while kids in Daviess County are about to see a real boost in their Internet education activities, children elsewhere are going to be left behind. We’ll have more to say on this bandwidth issue shortly in a forthcoming Bluegrass Institute report, so stay tuned.

But, ending on a happy note, at least in Daviess County the upgrade is actually cheaper than the former system. The three T1 lines each school formerly used cost a total of $1,200 a month per school. The new fiber service is only $750 a month per school.

Nice shopping, Daviess County Public Schools!