The Situation
Isle of Wight County Public Schools is a rural school division serving just under 5,000 students in southeastern Virginia. The division consists of four Elementary Schools, two Middle Schools, two High Schools and the Educational Services Center. These nine buildings are geographically dispersed over an area stretching some 30 miles. Two separate cable companies serve roughly 30% of the county. A single phone company serves the entire county, but it's long distance to call from one end to the other. The closest Internet Service Provider is nearly 30 miles away.

The Need
In order to prepare students for the 21st century and to comply with the recently-adopted Virginia Standards of Learning, the Isle of Wight County Public Schools must provide Internet access to every building in the division. Traditional Options
"Traditional" Internet connection methods were explored including Dial-Up POTS, ISDN, Frame Relay, and Leased Lines. Each of these options proved to be too slow, too costly or were simply not available.

The Wireless Option
WHRO, the public telecommunications center serving southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, is an Internet Service Provider. WHRO also happens to own a number of towers in various cities across the region including one in Driver, Virginia. The Isle of Wight County Schools happen to own a tower which is adjacent to their Educational Services Center. The distance from WHRO to the Driver tower is approximately 12.5 miles. The distance from the Driver tower to the Isle of Wight tower is also about 12.5 miles. Consequently, a wireless option might be possible.

Determining Factors
Distance - 12.5 miles was within the operating range of a number of wireless products currently available in 1996.
Geography - There were no man-made or environmental obstacles between WHRO and Driver or between Driver and the Isle of Wight tower at the EducationalServices Center. Furthermore, once the connection from WHRO to the Educational Services Center was made, there was only one school within the county that could not be served from the Educational Services Center using wireless.
Initial Cost - The initial cost for installing a turn-key wireless system, including hardware, software and antenna placement and alignment, was approximately $16,000 - $20,000 for each link.
On-Going Costs - All Internet Service Fees consist of two components: the communications circuit and bandwidth usage. Only the bandwidth usage charge would still apply once the wireless circuit was functional. Speed - In order to serve the Internet needs of nine buildings from a single location (the Educational Services Center), it was decided that at least a 1.54 Mb circuit was necessary.
Reliability - The service had to be up and running everyday Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. at a minimum. Partnership with WHRO - WHRO is actually owned by several school divisions in southeastern Virginia and offers a number of educational technology services to schools throughout the region including training, content development, technical consultation and Internet service. Consequently, WHRO was the preferred ISP.

Current Situation
After identifying and negotiating with a number of vendors, an organization known as WAVE Wireless was chosen by the Isle of Wight County Public Schools. Since July of 1997, a 2 Mb connection between WHRO and the Educational Services Center has been up and running.

Future Plans
The Isle of Wight County Schools plan to extend the wireless network to the other eight buildings in 1998.