MUSD Digital 395 node site
At its Dec. 8 meeting, Mammoth Unified School District voted unanimously to approve a license agreement with California Broadband Cooperative, Inc., for use of MUSD land to put in a node site for the Digital 395 broadband infrastructure project. On what specific parcel the node, or “anchor site,” would be located is yet to be determined, but in any case the Board of Education quickly decided that the benefits far outweighed waiving the annual fee of $2,175, which was part of the agreement.
BOE member Greg Newbry pointed out that MUSD could end up with an improved deal on the cutting edge broadband, since the district would be able to lease bandwidth direct from the CBC probably at a much better rate than going through a provider.
Allowing the node site is part of a multi-jurisdictional cooperative effort between numerous counties and their various agencies to facilitate D395’s implementation, in the form of “in-kind” services and permit fee waivers. Michael Ort, CEO of Praxis, which is overseeing D395’s installation, texted The Sheet “That is great news” upon learning of the vote.
What a great idea – very happy to hear this was unanimously approved. How about multiple POPs (Point Of Presence) all throughout the schools? How about a sonet ring between POPs in each building in the MUSD with BGP for redundancy and load-balancing. I have no doubt MUSD and the kids can benefit from this greater bandwidth potential. Hopefully we can help turn some kids into amazing computer programmers and give them the edge in the working world. Nostalgia aside, I wish I had that type of bandwidth and ease of access to the intrawebs when I was in highschool.