Flexible and Powerful Network for Amarillo Independent School District

Co-location provider’s delivery of a secure and reliable network positions the school district with technology that will scale as digital needs expand 

Atlanta, GA, October 26, 2021 – FiberLight, LLC, a fiber infrastructure provider with more than 20 years of experience building and operating mission-critical, high-bandwidth networks, today announced the successful deployment of a 70-mile dark fiber network expansion to the Amarillo Independent School District (AISD). Based in the city of Amarillo, Texas, AISD spans nearly 70 square miles of land in Randall and Potter County with 58 locations and serves over 32,500 students from kindergarten through high school. FiberLight’s delivery of dark fiber services positions AISD for long-term growth, delivers network agility and control, enables student access to digital opportunities, enhances security and paves the way for new developments.

AISD first encountered the need to upgrade its existing network services when the changes to the Texas State Legislature funding would increase AISD’s network service charges by nearly 3500% per month.  With AISD’s existing infrastructure, the level of robust bandwidth and on-site hosting capabilities needed to scale to support distance learning and increased security measures during the pandemic was unsustainable and not financially viable.

“As e-instruction grew and more applications moved online, we knew we were going to be needing more bandwidth,” said Jeff D. Roller, CTO of AISD. “We realized that building our own network would protect our budget and bottom line as well as provide new levels of flexibility needed to expand schools, increase bandwidth and remove restrictions—giving us free rein to do what we wanted with our network.”

FiberLight was chosen by AISD to deploy a 70-mile dark fiber network expansion to support educational technology and security capabilities for its K-12 students and faculty – including the use of tablets, laptops, video-based lectures, distance learning programs, and phones in every classroom, as well as additional campus-wide security cameras. Because these applications and devices put a strain on existing district networks due to increased traffic from students and instructors, AISD required a powerful network to support the bandwidth capacity and heightened speed to support these applications, along with connecting campuses to a trusted data center.

With the FCC’s Category 1 E-rate program and the Texas State Legislature’s matching funds, AISD’s dark fiber network buildout was 100 percent subsidized. The state-of-the-art networking equipment was also eligible for coverage under Category 1, with 80 percent of the equipment covered as well.

“We’re proud to partner with Amarillo Independent School District to provide a highly capable and reliable network that will enable them to open up new opportunities for e-learning,” said Chris Rabii, CEO of FiberLight. “By enhancing the AISD network across its entire footprint with greater control, enhanced security and high-capacity connectivity, each of the district’s unique goals were met. Furthermore, with the district looking into building a private LTE network that would provision connectivity to student and staff homes and offer important remote education opportunities, this dark fiber created a necessary foundation for a potential development that otherwise would not be possible.”

To learn more about FiberLight’s deployment of a dark fiber network for AISD please visit https://www.fiberlight.com/Amarillo-ISD-Expansion.

About FiberLight

FiberLight designs, builds and deploys mission-critical high bandwidth networks to ignite our client’s digital transformation. With 16,000 route miles of fiber networks and 78,000 pre-qualified near-net buildings, FiberLight operates in over 30 metropolitan areas in the U.S. Our service portfolio includes high-capacity Ethernet and Wave Transport Services, Cloud Connect, Dedicated Internet Access, Dark Fiber and Wireless Backhaul serving domestic and international telecom companies, wireless, wireline, cable and cloud providers as well as key players across enterprise, government, and education. For more information, visit fiberlight.com or follow us on Twitter @FiberLight_LLC.

FiberLight Contact:
Escalate PR
FiberLight@escalatepr.com