D.C. Memo: Educators Demand Changes to FCC's Wi-Fi Hotspots Program
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Wi-Fi Hotspots: Pushback from educators about the design of the FCC's Wi-Fi hotspots program is building. The Dallas Independent School District (Dallas ISD) – with 22,222 staff members,153,861 students, and 230 schools – has asked the FCC to support a direct Internet connection to student devices. "The logistics and complexity of managing physical hotspot devices, versus connections to existing student/staff computing devices that could be turned off/on dynamically at any time, reduces Dallas ISD’s ability to respond to the changing needs of our students, staff, and households,” said Dallas ISD Assistant Superintendent of Technology Jonathan Hurley in an Oct. 1 filing with the FCC. The head of the 500,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District said the FCC should fund wireless LTE service to connect laptops or Chromebooks directly to the Internet, which would eliminate the need to purchase hotspot devices, saving money. Hurley said the FCC’s program design raised "concerns over distribution, collection, redistribution, loss, theft, damage, inventory management, unauthorized users, credentialing, and potential cybersecurity risks." Dallas ISD's concerns would be addressed "if connectivity were provided directly to the school-owned computing devices provided to students and staff which are in use, secured, and monitored every day," Hurley said. The FCC's Wi-Fi hotspots rules have been challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit by a Texas couple concerned about unsupervised teen access to the Internet.