College consortium planning super-speedy internet for Kansas schools

The not-for-profit consortium that provides ultra-high-speed internet to Kansas universities and colleges is proposing to fan the network out to cover every public K-12 school in the state.

The Kansas Research and Education Network, KanREN, is proposing the Prairie Line Express initiative to ensure that every school has internet service of at least one-gigabit speed. That would be as fast as the fastest service now available commercially to the public, the Google Fiber network in the Kansas City suburbs.

KanREN says its initiative dovetails with a goal announced by Gov. Sam Brownback in his Jan. 10 State of the State speech, where he pledged to make it a priority that “every student, in every classroom, will have affordable, effective, high-speed internet.”

Officials of KanREN say the consortium is uniquely positioned to provide that because it already has an ultra-high-speed fiber network in place for public and private colleges.

“It is time to provide K-12 students across the state with the same reach and opportunity we have provided Kansas universities for 25 years,” Cort Buffington, executive director of KanREN, said in a statement announcing the Prairie Line initiative. “It is time for us to take this technology to every classroom in every school district to unleash students’ innovation and creativity.”

KanREN already provides 100-gigabit service – 100 times as fast as Google Fiber – to Wichita State, Kansas State, the University of Kansas and the KU Medical Center, said project spokesman Kris Millsap.

It provides 10-gigabit service to the state’s smaller universities, community colleges and some public schools and municipalities, Millsap said.

According to Education Superhighway, a national nonprofit group working to expand broadband to schools, about 94 percent of Kansas schools are connected to the internet at at least 100 kilobits per second, which is roughly twice the speed of an old dial-up line. That ranks Kansas 16th in the nation for connectivity.

However, the state ranks 31st for affordability, with 53 percent of schools reporting they can’t get the speed they need for the dollars they have.

Because the consortium is not-for-profit and owned by its members, it’s able to provide service at much lower rates than for-profit internet service providers, Millsap said.

KanREN has put out a request for proposals seeking providers who can link the schools to the consortium’s backbone.

Once those bids come in, KanREN will be able to estimate the costs for school districts to join the consortium and buy their internet service.

“I can’t say what that number is, but I can say it’s astonishingly low,” Millsap said. “Schools (will be able to) pay less than what’s going to be available through (for-profit) ISPs.”

This story was originally published January 25, 2017 at 3:52 PM with the headline "College consortium planning super-speedy internet for Kansas schools."