Case Studies and Customer Deployment
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Tulare County Office of Education LTE Network
Smaller school districts in rural Tulare County have already made the jump to become their own ISPs, including Woodlake Unified in the southern Sierra foothills. Woodlake High School Principal Rick Rodriguez called the initiative "one of the crown jewels of our district."
"This opened up everything," he told EdSource late last year.
Tulare County Superintendent Tim Hire said he is working with the same company as VUSD — called Red Rover Ltd. (http://redroverltd.com/) — to bring broadband to the county.
He said the Tulare County Office of Education has already secured a frequency from the Federal Communications Commission to make high-speed internet a reality for all Tulare County students by this fall. "Technology isn’t the end all be all; it’s a tool, and right now it's proving to be an extremely valuable tool," Hire said. "Not all of us here in Tulare County have the ability to travel and bring a wider context to learning... The internet can help bridge that gap for kids, especially in science and the arts." In the meantime, Hire says TCOE has been tapped to serve as one of five distribution sites for hotspots and other electronic devices the state is making available through donations from Google and other companies. Those deliveries are expected mid-May, Hire said. VUSD leaders expect the investment in broadband infrastructure to pay dividends as the reality of COVID-19 pushes online classes and distance learning more into the mainstream.
"Going forward with this COVID situation, people are going to look harder at more education online," VUSD Board President John Crabtree said. "I think
it's critical and I think it's long overdue to ensure all students have equal internet access in our district."
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Red Rover Ltd awarded the 2020 Raytheon Supplier Excellence Award Winner
Congratulations! I am pleased to announce that Red Rover LTD has been selected as a 2020 Raytheon Supplier Excellence Program Premier Award winner. Premier awards recognize suppliers who demonstrate premier achievement for Raytheon in one of the following categories: Affordability, Technical, Business Management and Partnership.
Each year, as part of the Raytheon Supplier Excellence Program, suppliers are selected for their outstanding performance, contribution, and support to our programs. Red Rover LTD has been selected to receive a Premier Award for overall Excellence in Partnership.
Raytheon leadership would like to thank you and your team for the hard work and dedication required to be recognized as a Premier Award winner. Additional Information regarding award distribution will be forthcoming.
Your commitment to performance excellence is greatly appreciated. It enables results for customers worldwide and solidifies a platform for our continued mutual success.
Again, congratulations on your achievement!
David J Broadbent
Vice President Contracts and Supply Chain
Intelligence, Information and Services
Raytheon Company -
Red Rover helps build Imperial County Office of Education LTE Network
Red Rover LTD assists ICOE in the build-out of their Private Educational LTE Network
Connectivity Beyond the Classroom:
Connecting Students… Anytime, Anywhere.
Imagine the possibilities if all students were using digital resources and advancing their education well-beyond school hours. Imagine if teachers were able to assign projects that require rich investigation and online research without worry of students who may be disadvantaged due to their lack of internet connectivity at home. Imagine backpacks without textbooks, replaced with devices that provide students anytime, anywhere access to interactive and adaptive curriculum.
The BorderLink pilot relies on Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, the same wireless technology that connects mobile phones and devices from all of the major carriers. LTE enables connectivity to mobile devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones. It allows our smartphones to be connected to the internet anytime,
anywhere, at high-speeds and with the same protections and policies that schools maintain for students at school. It can also connect smart meters, vehicles, traffic signaling, video surveillance, and many other devices that will change how our municipal and county government envision.
More about the Boarder Link Network can be found here:
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Visalia Unified to blanket district in free WiFi by summer using COVID-19 money
Tulare County's largest school district will soon become one of the region's biggest internet service providers. Visalia Unified School District will bring high-speed internet to thousands of homes within the district in an effort to close the digital divide that has prevented many San Joaquin Valley residents from accessing online learning materials. Over the next three months, the district will begin to install antennas at seven Visalia-area schools. The project is expected to blanket 91% of the district in WiFi, including rural Goshen and Ivanhoe. Families will still need a school-issued hotspot to access the internet in their homes. Netflix, Spotify and other high-bandwidth services will be blocked to maintain resources for learning, officials said.
"This will help with education year-round, not just during the current pandemic," Superintendent Tamara Ravalín said. About a quarter of VUSD students don't have internet service or don't have a high-speed connection required by many learning programs, according to a district survey.
That's become a major problem in recent weeks as the coronavirus pandemic has shut schools down and moved many classrooms to the internet, Ravalín said. The COVID-19 crisis has "brought to light" an initiative that's been discussed internally for at least five years.
"That is, many students don't have internet coverage," Ravalín said. "If they do, it's from a phone; it's not very fast."
The project is expected to cost $700,000, over half of which will be covered through emergency dollars the state has distributed to all California districts based on their size and other factors. “These funds will allow district administrators to ensure that sites are properly cleaned and sanitized, keep school staff safe, provide nutritious meals, and focus on implementing a distance learning infrastructure that is equitable and accessible to all students,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said earlier this month.
"I don't think it's germane to say the digital divide is a local problem or a California problem," the superintendent said. "This is an issue that many schools are grappling with nationwide, especially those in rural and lower-income areas."
It's unclear exactly how many students will need the service once the project is complete. Officials said the district plans to launch with 2,000 hotspots,\ each of which can connect up to six devices. For the 9% of students not covered by the service, the district will continue to provide commercial hotspots.
Ravalín said VUSD will also continue to distribute paper curriculum packets. The district survey found that most families — 62% — preferred the paper copies to online.
"So, when we get internet coverage, we will need to work on a gradual transition," Ravalín said. -
Red Rover Ltd Builds Educational LTE Network for Nebraska Indian Community College
Nebraska Indian Community College (NICC) provides a culturally-infused learning environment dedicated to bringing state-of-the-art facilities to students. Established in 1973, NICC was created to provide post-secondary educations to residents on the Omaha, Santee Sioux, and Winnebago reservations.
Today, the institution is accredited at the associate degree granting level, with three campuses located in North East Nebraska. The college continues to serve and create life-changing opportunities for students by providing a variety of cultural, educational, and social resources to isolated and economically underdeveloped areas in Nebraska.
One of the most recent of these resources is a new, private LTE network built by the college to provide its students with reliable Internet connectivity. The new network was integrated by Red Rover Ltd., which utilized the Baicells CloudCore Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and 2.5GHz base stations, and paired with a variety of user-end devices. This allowed NICC to be able to rapidly deploy its own network during the pandemic and begin to bridge the homework gap.
See the full Case Study:
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Desert Sands USD Offering Free Broadband to Students
Desert Sands provided student broadband service to the home with the "CONNECT" program. Students offered chomebook along with a District Private LTE enabled WiFi hotspot for at home connectivity for distance learning.
DSUSD LTE Connect flyer2018 -
LIndsay USD's Path to Community-Wide WiFi: CONNECTING EVERY LEARNER
CONNECTIVITY COUNTS
Given Lindsay’s innovative, technology-enabled approach, having access to the Internet isn’t a luxury, but a need. Described by Rooney as a “moral imperative,” the work embraces the current reality of college and career readiness by enabling students to complete assignments, hone critical research and technology skills, and virtually explore the world
from their own homes, 24/7. Even more, it provides parents, who are central to the district’s technology vision, an opportunity to become more involved in the lives of their children while building their own digital prowess.
To address this imperative, Lindsay complemented their in-school redesign with additional focus on a community-wide, out-of-school issue in the 2014-2015 school year: figuring out how to provide the same learner-friendly version of the Internet available at school to the homes of all its 4,200 learners -free of charge.
The process launched at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school
year but the pathway Lindsay Unified took to identifying and implementing a solution was neither simple nor straight. Reflecting on his own experiences, Lindsay Unified’s Network Administrator, Peter Sonksen, offers this humble observation: “By no means has any step in this process been easy. It’s been tricky getting here.”
The full story can be found here:
Lindsay USD Community Wide WiFi