Altice USA says that its Lightpath division has connected another 47 schools and school districts in New Jersey to its fiber-optic network. The connections for high-speed broadband services were made as part a purchasing cooperative created via the New Jersey Department of Education's Digital Readiness for Learning and Assessment Project (DRLAP). Lightpath has now connected more than 110 schools over the last two years under the program.
Bergen County Academies, a magnet high school, is among the new Lightpath connections. The school has purchased a combination of voice, data, and private network services to support cloud-based learning, security, and its evolving curriculum. Teachers have incorporated multimedia elements into their classrooms that leverage the fiber connections.
"Thanks to DRLAP and Altice USA's Lightpath, schools have been able to significantly improve network speed and reliability, all within budget. This is a tremendous win for schools across the state," commented John Cottage, system administrator for Bergen County Technical Schools.
The program began in 2015, when DRLAP selected what is now called the Educational Services Commission of New Jersey (ESCNJ) to administer a purchasing cooperative that would make it simpler and more cost-effective for K-12 schools in New Jersey to buy broadband services. Lightpath is one of a limited number of service providers selected by the cooperative as an option to supply services.
European cable TV conglomerate Altice N.V. (Euronext: ATC, ATCB) created Altice USA when it acquired Suddenlink and Cablevision (see "Altice completes Cablevision buy, forms Altice USA, shuffles management"). Lightpath was a unit of Cablevision.
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