Dive Brief:
- At&T has launched a new initiative called Network on Demand, allowing customers to quickly scale up or down how much bandwidth they need and potentially alleviating some of the issues school districts have faced with online testing.
- No special equipment is needed to take advantage of the new service, as long switches and routers are Ethernet-compliant.
- The cost will include a regular monthly charge, as well as variable rates based on how much bandwidth a school or school district uses.
Dive Insight:
The service, while not intended solely for schools, is particularly useful for the fluctuations of the academic calendar. The ability to rapidly scale up bandwidth for a short period of time could also go a long way toward alleviating test season struggles. As the number of schools delivering exams online increases, the challenges of paying for bandwidth that’s hardly used during the rest of the year mount. It’s particularly useful for smaller districts that can’t afford their own network engineers to craft a network that adapts to their needs.
School districts would also be able to quickly add locations and services, which could help them respond to the individual needs of schools and teachers.
"Because of the way the school year exists, schools have very different needs at different times of the year," Trevor Shaw, director of technology for the Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey told eSchool News. "A solution like this goes a long way to recognizing how those unique aspects of a school’s calendar can be leveraged to save money."
