Future lawyers and their teachers at Brooklyn Law School in New York City will have a better handle on the outside world and the resources of the Internet, thanks to a telecommunications upgrade provided by Cablevision Systems' business unit, Optimum Lightpath.
In all, about 1,500 law students and 150 faculty members will get access to speeds up to 100 Mbps throughout the campus and in 11 nearby residence halls. The upgrade, which more than doubles previous speeds of 45 Mbps, also includes WiFi connectivity throughout common areas in campus buildings.
The school will be directly linked to Optimum Lightpath's New York metro FTTH Ethernet network that feeds medium and large enterprises. It does not connect to Cablevision's New York area wired or WiFi networks, emphasized Julia McGrath, senior vice president of business and marketing development in a conversation with FierceCable.
"The company (Cablevision) has made a conscious choice to invest in Optimum Lightpath and keep the network separate and apart so we can use it as part of our sales proposition when approaching mid-market and large market enterprise customers," she said.
The speed of the bundle seems almost like overkill for a law school.
"We've effectively doubled what their bandwidth capabilities had done before," McGrath said, adding that the bandwidth will come in handy for teaching purposes between staff and students and will be a must for "record keeping requirements that must be met where the administration is pushing information from one point to another point."
But the education segment today--law schools among that group--is seeing an uptick in demand for reliable, fast and secure connections. At the same time, budget and staff limitations can present a challenge for schools trying to meet students' need for speed.
For example, a public school in New Jersey that had long since outgrown its 3Mbps ATM circuit was able to drastically increase its Internet speed with a fiber optic upgrade through Optimum Lightpath, at a price even the cash-strapped school system could afford.
"On lots of occasions when we go out and interview a customer or are doing focus groups of people in the education vertical, we're talking to them about what they do with the bandwidth," says McGrath. "It is quite possible that video-rich content could be used in the teaching process to discuss legal cases, criminal cases, whatever the situation might be there."
For more:
- see this news release
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