Governments around the world are in a race to implement broadband technology as part of their infrastructure to educate students. While many small countries like South Korea, Japan and the Netherlands have made impressive progress, larger countries such as the United States, Canada, China and Australia are having a problem in covering every region in their country. In order to overcome this shortfall, school districts in the U.S. are collaborating with companies like AT&T, which is providing technological know-how to different school districts around the country to help them achieve this goal for K-12 schools.

AT&T (News - Alert) is providing networking services to increase bandwidth speed for a statewide online assessments examination. This assessment is part of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which is an initiative to standardize math and English curriculum by the end of the 2015 school year.

A report by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC (News - Alert)), titled "Measuring Broadband America," said that 80 percent of school districts don't meet their current broadband connection needs. As more examinations and educational processes are delivered online, existing infrastructure in these institutions will not be able to handle the capacity. AT&T is assisting the school districts by improving their broadband speeds and meeting the demand for bandwidth with secure and scalable networking services. The company will be implementing switched Ethernet and managed Internet services capable of supporting data, voice and video communications applications.

The State Education Technology Directors Association said that by 2015, they will need Wide Area Network connections of 1 Gbps per 1,000 students and staff.

Some of the school districts AT&T will be helping include:

• Bartow County (GA) Schools – upgrading its Metro Ethernet in order achieve speeds of 1-2 Gbps
• Caddo Parish (LA) Schools – installing AT&T's Switched Ethernet service
• Cleveland County (NC) Schools – upgrading infrastructure to AT&T's Switched Ethernet service
• Cullman County (GA) Schools – upgrading its bandwidth for all schools to meet the demand for a 1:1 mobile learning model
• Sacramento City (CA (News - Alert)) Unified School District – upgrading its circuits to a new 100 Mbps Ethernet OPT-E-MAN service from AT&T, including 64 high-speed data lines
• Wayne (MI) Regional Educational Service Agency – upgrading its capabilities by 1,000 percent expanding to 20 Gbps

"Technology is reshaping the 21st century classroom, from tablets and smartphones to online testing and videoconferencing. Having a strong network infrastructure, backed by one of the world's most advanced and powerful global networks, is essential to successfully supporting the future of educational technology," said John Irwin, AT&T senior vice president of Government, Education and Healthcare.