The CoSN 2017 Infrastructure Survey examines the current state of technology infrastructure in U.S. K-12 districts. The FCC has used past findings to modernize and expand funding of E-rate. This year’s report was conducted in partnership with AASA, The School Superintendents Association, MDR and Forecast5 Analytics.
Key Findings
- More than half of the districts reported that none of their schools meet the FCC’s long-term broadband connectivity goal of 1 Gbps per 1,000 students.
- Forty-seven percent indicated at least some schools are meeting the FCC’s long-term connectivity goal, with a minority of districts (16 percent) indicating they are achieving the long-term goal in every school.
- For the first time, survey results show fewer than one-tenth of districts are paying $50 / Mbps or more for their Internet or WAN. This is a very positive trend as fewer and fewer districts are paying very high monthly costs per megabit.
- Software as a service (SaaS) is an accepted practice in districts, with 94 percent indicating that they use some type of Cloud-based software system.
- The overwhelming reason why districts are moving to the cloud is to avoid “time-intensive installation/maintenance of software,” with 82 percent of districts indicating that is the case.
- Rural districts comprise nearly 60 percent of all districts that receive one or no bids for broadband services. This lack of competition remains a significant burden for rural schools.
- Approximately one-third of districts do not use consortia buying for E-rate purchases despite their availability. This has doubled from last year’s 17 percent mark.
- School systems are spending more and more on security – nearly half (45 percent) spend more than 10 percent of their budget on network security. This marks an increase from 19 percent of school districts in 2016.
- More than one-third of districts continue to experience one day or more of unplanned network downtime every year – and have experienced such an outage each year since 2014.
For more information about the survey’s findings, view the full report.
