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
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I always welcome comments, so please… feel free! 😉
June 28, 2006 @ 11:58 am
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.
June 28, 2006 @ 4:24 pm
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
June 28, 2006 @ 5:00 pm
What’s BT’s margin on the bandwidth it resells to the City?
June 28, 2006 @ 6:00 pm
An example of cherry picking at its best.
I’d be very interested to learn what the fine print says in this deal. For example, are the schools consequently paying higher rates for phone calls (locally measured & LD)? Does the extra speed expire after xx amount of time? Are the schools now obligated to give Vtel sponsorship rights to sports games due to a non-compete clause? Or maybe a right of first refusal?
Also curious to know how VTel gets away with this offer if they are mandated by the PSB to offer their infrastructure to resellers (in this case BT) at cost. Either VTel is breaching the Public Service mandate or they are taking a loss on the deal in hopes of gaining some marketing advantages (not unlike Wal-Mart).
Smells very fishy.
June 29, 2006 @ 9:03 am
I’ve always said that the whole BT concept smelled fishy, glad to see someone else acknowledge it.
June 29, 2006 @ 6:44 pm
“…glad to see someone else acknowledge it.”
Not sure how you see my comments as agreeing with your concern over BT. All my questions were centered around VTel.
June 29, 2006 @ 7:53 pm
You’re right, I’m sure VTel agrees with us that something seems fishy with BT.
June 30, 2006 @ 2:30 pm
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.
June 30, 2006 @ 7:16 pm
Yeah, increased bandwidth is useless for an entire school system, dumbass.