MTA Announces ConnectMT™ Gigabit Goal for Montana Schools, Libraries and Anchor Institutions

The members of the Montana Telecommunications Association, or MTA,
want to ensure that Montana leads the way in broadband connectivity.

MTA
therefore is launching ConnectMT™, an initiative whose goal is to deliver up to
gigabit broadband speeds to our State’s schools and libraries and other
community anchor institutions by 2020. We will be working with our partners in
the public sector and other key stakeholders to determine how much bandwidth
we need, when, where and at what cost.

There is little doubt that an advanced broadband telecommunications
network benefits people’s lives in countless ways. We rely on the Internet for
host of time-saving and even life-saving services, from health care and public
safety, to government services, entertainment and education, to name just a few
of the areas where broadband connectivity makes our lives more productive and
robust. A lot of attention is focused today on how broadband promises to enrich
the learning environment at our schools and libraries.

In this regard, President Obama announced an initiative to deliver ultrahigh-
speed Internet connectivity to the nation’s students over the next 5 years.
His goal is to deliver 100 megabits of bandwidth per 1,000 students in the near
term, and to increase that to 1 gigabit per 1,000 students in five years. For those
of you who may be unfamiliar with megabits and gigabits, suffice it to say that
100 megs is a lot of bandwidth. Fifty megabits usually is more than enough
bandwidth to serve most large institutional broadband consumers today.

Needless to say, 100 megs is twice as much as most large consumers use
today, and a gigabit is ten times more. However, as FCC Commissioner Jessica
Rosenworcel told a Montana audience last Summer, we should shoot for the
moon.

The President and educators alike realize that broadband by itself won’t
make Johnny or Jane any smarter. The Center for American Progress recently
reported that "Technology alone will not revolutionize our nation’s school system.
We also have to address myriad other education issues, from teacher training to
lengthening the school day and year."

John Harrington, CEO of Funds for Learning, a company that helps
schools meet their broadband technology needs, notes in a recent Education
Week article that "for many schools, the [broadband] bottleneck is inside the
schools themselves" and not with the connection the schools have to the
Internet. Similarly, Evan Marwell, CEO of EducationSuperHighway, a California
nonprofit that is promoting higher bandwidth speeds at our nation’s schools,
advises schools to assess their needs for bandwidth and devices. "Every school
should have a plan," he says in an EdWeek article.

In short, we need to identify what we need, where we need it, at what cost
and when. We need not spend public or private resources on services for which
there is no realistic demand. On the other hand, we do need to devote resources
where they are demonstrably needed.

So what are we doing today to ensure that our schools, libraries and
anchor institutions have access to high-capacity broadband connectivity?
Montana’s rural broadband providers and the hundreds of Montanans they
employ have deployed nearly 20,000 miles of fiber in our state. These
companies invest nearly $75 million annually in capital expenditures. Nationally,
according to the FCC, broadband deployment has grown at a phenomenal 17%
compound annual rate from 2003 through 2012, the latest year in which data
were collected. There are 60 million connections over 10 megs as of YE2012.

The number of 10-meg connections grew 31% in 2013 alone according to
Akamai, an international could services provider. The US has more twice as
many broadband connections as any other developed country in the world,
according to the OECD. Japan, Korea and others run far behind.
In Montana, we’re already well on our way to reaching our ConnectMT™
gigabit goal. MTA’s members currently deliver gigabit speeds on our backbone networks, and to anchor institutions that request it. And, we largely meet the
President’s broadband connectivity goals for schools and libraries when you
account for average school sizes in Montana. Most–if not all–of our largest
schools have connections capable of delivering 100 megs today. And our
smaller schools proportionally can get the equivalent of 100 megs or more per
1,000 students (e.g., 10 megs per 100 students; 20 megs for 200 students, etc.).

By leveraging our substantial telecommunications assets in Montana, we
can create a virtuous cycle of broadband investment, deployment and adoption.
Increasing demand for broadband promotes more investment, which enables
more, innovative uses for broadband, which encourages more investment, and
so on. Through ConnectMT™, we will work with public and private stakeholders
to optimize our broadband infrastructure to deliver broadband connectivity at
whatever speeds our end users can reasonably and affordably consume.

Visit our website at http://www.telecomassn.org for more information, or give us
a call at 406.442.4316.

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Contact: Geoff Feiss, General Manager

Montana Telecommunications Association

406.442.4316

[email protected]

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