FCC Proposes $1 Billion A Year To Bring WiFi To All Schools

There are some schools that are lucky and have the necessary budget to provide WiFi throughout the entire school, thus allowing students, staff, and faculty to access the internet effortlessly. Unfortunately the opposite is also true, where some schools simply do not have the money to install WiFi for the entire student body.

Now the good news is that things could soon change for the better. According to a new proposal by the FCC, they are proposing that $1 billion be allocated to schools per year that will allow them to install WiFi. As it stands, three out of five schools do not have the WiFi that they need, which is something that needs to be addressed.

The FCC’s Chairman, Tom Wheeler, plans to allocate $1 billion in E-Rate funds for WiFi starting in 2015, and another $1 billion in 2016, with the goal to bring WiFi to more than 10 million students in the upcoming years. However this is working under the assumption that action is being taken this summer, which means that the program could come into effect by the 2015 school year.

According to Wheeler, “This proposal will also begin a multi-year transition of all E-Rate funding away from 20th Century technologies, like dial-up phone service and pagers, to 21st Century broadband to every classroom, while maintaining flexibility to meet the needs of individual schools and libraries.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Education, FCC