isen.blog

Dennis Schweikhardt is upset that the FCC has cut funding on the dark fiber Gigabit Ethernet network that he built in 1998 for Spokane, Washington's 13 educational institutions in the greater Spokane, Washington (state) area and now administers. With Schweikhardt's net, not only do schools in Spokane get whizzy Internet connections and advanced video services, but also, the Spokane Public Schools have dumped their separate phone system saving thousands of dollars a month with VoIP over Schweikhardt's GigE net. You know whose pocket these "savings" come from, right?

The Spokane initiative was funded by a local bonds, a state K-20 education fund, local businesses, a private/public partnership and the federal E-Rate, a part of the universal service fund designed to, "provides discounts to assist most schools and libraries in the United States to obtain affordable telecommunications and Internet access."

Over the past several years, my friend Dave Hughes, #1 in the Wired 25 of 1999 has railed against the E-Rate because it covers only services, not products. In other words, the E-Rate subsidizes telephone bills, but not, e.g., wireless gear. That is, the E-Rate limits what schools get to what the LEC provides. It is an LEC subsidy!

I don't know how school-owned dark fiber networks continued to get E-rate funding. But that ended on last week, on October 10, 2003, when the E-Rate posted its new Eligible Services List, which stops covering both dark fiber and VoIP, which were covered for the last five years, ". . . pending resolution of this issue."

Schweikhardt emailed me to say:

The FCC has now decreed to the SLD that dark fiber leasing and Voice Over IP is IN-ELIGIBLE for E-Rate subsidy. In our case this is has been at a 65% subsidy and worth several hundred thousand dollars. This will effect all schools and libraries in the country that have been receiving this support. For the last six years it has been eligible and starting in 2004 it will no longer be eligible. They do continue to support copper based T-1's Cells phones and other traditional services and "lit" fiber services, just not if we light it ourselves as we may need. We lease it as a pipe to move data and voice to and from our schools just as we would if it were copper or lit fiber. Why should schools be penalized for choosing a better and more economical solution? I have included their just published (Oct 10th 2003) document outlining what they will and will not cover.

In a follow-up email, Schweikhardt said:

I would like to clarify two points. (1) We do not own the fiber itself. We deliberately structured it as a leased service for E-rate purposes. Also, the school district didn't want to deal with cable maintenance. (2) We are not opposed to E-rate . . . I would just like an even playing field on the types of services we are allowed deploy so we get the most value for our limited dollars.

The E-Rate, if it exists at all, should allow schools that want to own their own networks to do so! That it does not, in the emerging age of Customer Owned Networks, is a travesty!