Tempe Elementary School District

Tempe, Arizona PDF Version

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TESD enjoys 20x faster speeds thanks to a network consolidation.

BACKGROUND

The Tempe Elementary School District (TESD) serves 13,257 students across 25 schools and found that its 6M copper-based network between the district office and 25 elementary schools was not keeping pace with the demands of teachers and students. The district needed a major upgrade so that multiple users would not continue to face the daily challenges insufficient technology caused including: inability to download video content because a teacher in another classroom was attempting to do the same thing, the network freezing because too many students were researching at once and outages due to inclement weather.

Administrators faced related challenges having to sift through 50 different invoices per month. And they didn’t know exactly what services they had located throughout the district because the former carrier could not provide an accurate accounting. The Tempe Elementary School District wanted and needed to take a step into the future with a network that could keep up with a research-based curriculum that enhanced thinking skills through online learning.

SOLUTIONS

Cox Business thoroughly assessed the needs of the Tempe Elementary School District and recommended a scalable, fiber optic Metro Ethernet network connecting the district office to its 25 schools. Cox Business replaced the school’s older copper wiring with a more reliable and faster fiber network. The new service provides a 1G connection – more than 20 times faster than their previous 6M connection.

Cox Business was also able to simplify auditing and accounting for the district by reducing 50 invoices to just two per month – one for data and one for voice – that provide a detailed accounting of all service.

RESULTS

“The upgrade to our network has made a dramatic impact on the delivery of supplemental Internet and Web services to our students and staff. The network is more robust, reliable and quicker,” said David Diokno, principal of Scales Technology Academy in Tempe.

Teachers can now run simultaneous, advanced applications and video feeds including Discovery Education and IDEAL e-learning that they could not run before. Moreover, the district can now have up to 600 simultaneous users Web surfing, accessing resources and communicating at the same time. “This is something that would often come to a crawl under our old system,” said Diokno. The upgraded network now allows the schools to stream daily announcements to classrooms instantaneously, with file sizes ranging from 20 to 30M.