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Wednesday, June 28, 2006

School district embraces the free market in Internet service

In today's Free Press, there's an article about the Burlingon School District ditching the Burlington Telecom service for a faster & more affordable service, but get this: for the same price, they would be getting 5 times the speed of service from the main provider that they already receive!

Kudos to the school district for taking initiative on this & saving some of our taxpayer money!

Burlington School District switches Internet provider service from Burlington Telecom

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now let's see whether the City could do better by contracting directly with Vermont Telephone. That's one bit of "transparency" I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for.

Anonymous said...

The Free Press article gives the impression that Burlington Telecom “lost” a major customer when the School System changed its Internet supplier from BT to Vermont Telephone (VTel) . Nothing could be further from the truth.

BT provides the high-speed fiber connections that “power” the school telecom and information system. It also provides the voice telephone system. It will continue to do both.

In addition to the above services, BT has, in the past, purchased Internet Bandwidth from VTel and resold it, at no profit, to the Schools. However, VTel has decided to provide a special offer directly to schools around the state—and offer well below what it charges to normal residential and business customers (including BT). This heavily discounted Internet Bandwidth will still be transported to the Schools over BT’s fiber network.

Since BT never made any money on the Internet Bandwidth which it simply passed through to the Schools, it loses nothing by the switch. The Schools, however, gain a great deal.


Richard Donnelly
Marketing & Sales Manager
Burlington Telecom

Anonymous said...

What's BT's margin on the bandwidth it resells to the City?

Anonymous said...

I've always said that the whole BT concept smelled fishy, glad to see someone else acknowledge it.

Anonymous said...

You're right, I'm sure VTel agrees with us that something seems fishy with BT.

Anonymous said...

If the service costs the same I don't see how this is saving the taxpayers anything. It just means the superintendent can download porn faster.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, increased bandwidth is useless for an entire school system, dumbass.