The much needed expansion of capacity would afford all of the educational sectors huge benefits. We believe an expenditure of this size will require action on the part of the 1997 State Legislature. The UH link has been saturated for over a year with negative impacts on its instructional and research activities, and the DOE link is expected to saturate soon with the Department's dramatic advances in school connectivity in the last year. The task force believes that it is of considerable importance to provide educational opportunities via telecommunication access to not only educational sites, but also into the home to provide extended and accessible opportunities for learning to all members of the family. We believe that these links must be provide by the private sector through development of the state's public network infrastructure.
Most people currently access digital information services from home via dialup modem.
The UH and DOE do not have the resources to provide unlimited free dialup access to meet the educational needs of our community of over 250,000 students, faculty and staff. However the task force believes we can leverage our statewide buying power to obtain favorable rates for the education community, and make such rates available to residents of every island. It is clear that technology is rapidly advancing in this area, and that dialup service is merely the entry point into the range of services that will be available as the notion of the information superhighway takes form. This resource has been crucial in the development of the DOE Electronic Schools project and UH educational programming including the Oahu-wide AA degree project. Today the UH and DOE collaboratively schedule most of the prime time hours available on the educational channels that are set aside for PEG access.