Schools opt for AT&T’s WAN Internet connection

The debate over which Internet capability service, Baton Rouge-based Detel or AT&T, would service the Lafourche Parish School System’s Wide Area Network (WAN) has been settled.

After a delayed decision, the Lafourche Parish School Board chose AT&T because the company can install the parish-wide hurricane-resistant, computer-networking services within a six-month window of the 2009 hurricane season.

The Wide Area Network system brings Internet capabilities to all the schools, and keeps track of all administrative data and email applications, according to Britt Ledet, director of data processing and technology for Lafourche public schools.

Some of the servers at the central office can also handle curriculum type software in which the children run programs from the schools and the information is stored at the central office.

Lafourche Parish has nearly 30 school sites. Ledet said if the link between individual schools and the central office is broken, administrators lose the ability to track this data.

The school board’s current WAN provider, Skyrider Inc., uses a system that includes towers, antennas and radios. The board currently pays Skyrider about $101,700 per year for this service.

However, Ledet said some of the towers were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and again by Hurricane Gustav this past September.

“This caused a major disruption in daily school functions,” Ledet said. “The design of the network unfortunately didn’t take into account the reality of our environment, which is exposure to hurricanes.”

School board members saw proposals from Detel and AT&T at a special meeting last Monday.

Both business proposals focused on a new underground communications system for the Lafourche Parish School System that uses below-ground fiber-optic cables, called information “pipelines” or “highways,” to connect the central office to schools.

Detel would charge a one-time installation cost of $214,600 and an annually recurring fee of $360,400 for a 1,000-megabyte connection between the office and parish schools.

“At this time, the school system does not believe it needs a 1,000 MB connection to each school,” Ledet said.

AT&T connection with the parish ends near the Lockport area. In order to provide parish-wide services, the company partnered with Larose-based Vision Communications at a cost of $40,262 for a one-time installation fee and an annual rate of $138,834 for a 100 MB connection.

AT&T representatives said their connection to the Lafourche school system could be increased to 1,000 MB, if need be, for a price that is similar to Detel’s.

For the school board members, how soon the system could be installed was more important than the cost.

AT&T installation projected a timeline of six months, while Detel representatives estimated it would take their company about a year longer than that to complete the connection process.

The board was under pressure to move quickly or risk losing large financial incentives from the federal government’s E-rate program, which offers a 79 percent discount to school systems for installation of telecommunication and Internet access connections.

The program deadline was not available as of press time.

The board unanimously approved AT&T’s proposal to provide Internet service to parish schools at an annual rate of $17,400, which is less than half the current rate from Skyrider.