Connected schools

Every day we hear stories of families driving miles and spending hours in parking lots of restaurants or public Wi-Fi hotspots to give their children a chance to participate in distance learning, due to a lack of broadband internet at home.

During the pandemic, anchor institutions, cities/counties and non-profits across the country rose to the challenge of bridging the digital divide in their communities. 

Local governments can play a decisive role in overcoming these challenges by prioritizing broadband initiatives and collaborating with private companies such as Nokia. With our partners, we serve the specific needs of school districts and local communities through best-in-breed broadband communications solutions that are fast and easy to deploy and manage.

Nokia’s Private wireless solution – Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) with FastMile CPE — can help cities, counties and educational entities ensure students’ access to online learning from the comfort and safety of their homes. 

The same solution will ensure broadband connectivity and business continuity for city services, such as community centers, hospitals and libraries, and improve the safety of public employees as they can work from home in compliance with COVID-19 public health precautions.

Government funding creates opportunities, communication technology enables solutions

To minimize the disruption and close the technology gap, many governments have started rolling out COVID-19 relief programs and are investing in or subsidizing initiatives for broadband infrastructure deployment and adoption.

In the US, for example, the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act established a $US150 billion Coronavirus Relief Fund to help state, local and tribal governments navigate the impact of COVID-19.

A considerable part of this amount will be invested in residential broadband infrastructure to facilitate distance learning, especially in rural and underserved areas. Independent school districts (ISDs) are playing a crucial role in defining strategies and establishing partnerships to utilize these funds for providing students and families with laptops and affordable internet access.

Some schools and communities are opting for a DIY approach that involves integrating a mix of building blocks such as Wi-Fi access points, internet routers and open-source software into a single network. But many lack the technical skills and resources they need to succeed with these efforts. And although DIY solutions may look cheaper on paper, in most cases they turn out to be more expensive after commissioning.

An alternative, less risky, approach is to partner with established solution providers to build and roll out a network based on proven technology and future-safe industry standards.

While government funding has been a major enabler for these networks, the availability of spectrum is certainly another one. The Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) is the result of a joint effort between the FCC and industry to share existing 3.5 GHz radio spectrum and make it available for private networks in the US. The CBRS band can be used for LTE and, because it is unlicensed or lightly licensed, it is applicable and affordable for the education sector, too. It provides a unique opportunity for schools and other public facilities, such as libraries and hospitals, to quickly and cost-effectively deploy LTE-based wireless broadband that provides ample coverage and capacity in suburban and unserved urban areas.

The CBRS is proving to be the best and most viable option for communities in these areas. For example, the projects in Collinsville and Bexar County have both made successful use of the CBRS band. To make deployment simpler we have partnered with Key Bridge Wireless to provide the first pre-integrated turnkey CBRS solution. The solution combines Spectrum Access System (SAS) and Environmental Sensing Capability (ESC) infrastructure from Key Bridge with our private 4.9G/LTE and 5G solutions, which include CBRS endpoints, CBRS-certified radio, transport, core and applications.

Higher education institutions are also seeking to rapidly digitalize their operations so they can better serve the changing needs of students, academic staff and researchers on their campuses. To succeed, they must evolve their wireless communications infrastructure to offer higher-performing applications and tools that will help their staff and students work more productively. 

Until now, their main approach has been to install new or upgrade existing Wi-Fi networks. But Wi-Fi technology is starting to show limitations in its ability to meet the increased demands of mobility, latency, throughput and total cost of ownership. 

Private wireless 4.9G/LTE and 5G networks can power next-generation campus services and operations, enabling higher education institutions to leverage standardized technologies and new spectrum options to provide the security, reliability, coverage, mobility, capacity and flexibility that digital and Industry 4.0 applications demand. By complementing Wi-Fi with private wireless networks, they can power a new generation of mission-critical campus services and operational capabilities that address the changing needs of staff and students while reducing network cost of ownership.

Academic research and education bolster a region or a country’s innovation, and economic competitiveness and growth. Therefore, advanced R&E networks are key assets to develop, experiment and demonstrate Industry 4.0 technologies and use cases.  

High performance, private wireless networks and edge computing platforms enable ‘living labs’ for researching, developing, testing and demonstrating new 5G-based applications, business models and use cases driven by immersive, Internet of Things (IoT) and AI technologies.

These lab capabilities will boost industry-academia collaboration, and eventually enable critical sectors like energy, healthcare and first responders to reach new levels of efficiency and productivity.

Possible use cases include, but are not limited to:

• Equipping classrooms and auditoriums with smart boards, smart podiums or smart lighting.
• Providing staff and students with access to broadband access and office productivity tools on their mobile devices.
• Creating augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) classrooms that can be accessed from anywhere in the world.
• Enabling labs to study and research Industry 4.0 technologies for business- and mission-critical IoT applications across many industries.
• Optimizing building, water, power and environmental management with building automation and control systems.
• Easing the deployment of surveillance cameras, smoke sensors and emergency call buttons across the campus; These applications can be complemented with drone- or robot-based surveillance.
• Keeping academic and operations staff connected with group communication applications such as push-to-talk (PTT) and push-to-video (PTV).
• Using connected digital billboards to spread general information, provide emergency announcements, help with wayfinding, engage visitors and make campus life simpler.
• Providing secure point-of-sale terminals throughout the campus to support ticket sales, food and beverage services, concerts and events. These capabilities can be complemented with drone- or autonomous vehicle-based delivery services.