An estimated $3.2 billion in new funds are needed to realize President Barack Obama’s goal of providing all students with high-speed wireless Internet connections inside their schools and libraries by 2018, concludes a new analysis by two prominent education-technology organizations.
That sum represents a needed investment above and beyond the $2.4 billion currently directed to schools and libraries each year as part of the federal E-rate program. It comes from the Washington-based Consortium for School Networking, or CoSN, and EducationSuperHighway, based in San Francisco.
The projections were drawn from consultations with over 50 district-level chief technology officers, and vendors and networking experts.
