School districts expand use of Wi-Fi hotspots on school buses, even as 5G ushers in the promise of even greater connectivity
Written by Jim Romeo E
arly last September, virtual learning commenced the 2020-2021 school year in Santa Ana, California, after the COVID-19 positivity rate was about four times greater than the rest of surrounding Orange County.
But the low-income district, which is the seventh largest in California with an enrollment of 58,000 students, ran headfirst into problems connecting students to remote classes. Santa Ana fell prey to the longstanding digital divide.
The district fielded dozens of calls each week com- plaining of difficulties with virtual learning. More specifically, over 50 percent of the calls were about poor wireless connectivity, which is essential to holding re- mote classes. Then, help came to the rescue. Local contractor JFK Transportation responded by sending bus drivers in school vans, equipped as 5G Wi- Fi hotspots, into the community. The company started with five vans, each able to reach 200 students within an internet service radius of over 1,000 feet. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and suddenly students had reliable internet connectivity at lightning speed. Fast and voluminous wireless connectivity is moving to the forefront of challenges that schools and transpor- tation departments are embracing. More features such as accountability apps, GPS for school bus routing and tracking, along with the potential of transforming the school bus into a rolling Wi-Fi spot is an opportunity that many industry vendors are eyeballing as advanced communications comes of age. This all comes as wireless connectivity is changing.
Wireless providers are decommissioning their 2G and 3G devices and fully transitioning to 4G and 5G. “The end dates for 3G depends on the carrier,” explained Matt De- ichman, senior vice president of customer success and information technology at Zonar. “AT&T’s obsolescent state is February of 2022. Verizon, at least, has postponed
38 School Transportation News • JUNE 2021
theirs, and they’ve now readdressed it as December of 2022. And T-Mobile and Sprint with their merger have not announced any 3G sunset date at this point.” He added that most of the current technologies focus on
efficiency within the school districts themselves. “I mean, just simply starting with keeping the buses up and run- ning, advanced diagnostics so you can actually prevent buses from breaking down while in route, service mainte- nance and things of that nature and records,” he observed.
Rolling Assets 5G may not only be used to improve GPS for fleet op-
erations but also for other applications, such as student accountability and access to Wi-Fi by students on the bus. Plus, the bus may serve as a router and be set up as a hotspot if needed, as was the case in Santa Ana. With 5G, the school bus becomes a rolling asset that may help students in additional ways to simply transporting them. “We see school bus mobile hot spots as a vital element
of distance learning, helping to ensure digital equity and close the homework gap,” said Rich Nedwich, global direc- tor of education at CommScope, a network infrastructure provider company based in Hickory, North Carolina. He cited the example of a school bus parked in a
specific neighborhood or scheduled to make stops in multiple neighborhoods. “On-bus connectivity helps with long commutes to
and from school, and potentially longer drives to and from school events, athletic away games, for example, allowing students to complete homework enroute, so they can get to bed at a reasonable time, rather than starting [homework] after they get home late,” Nedwich suggested. “Connected school buses offer multiple bene- fits for both students and teachers by providing a reliable and fast connection for [them] to access their online learning management systems.”
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