November 2014
30
Telecom
Re-thinking its ready embrace of the
Apple iPad, the Los Angeles school district is
again open for bids on a $1 billion contract
As the 2013 school year began in Los Angeles, the second
largest USA school district embarked on what Susan Ber eld of
Bloomberg Businessweek
calls ‘an ambitious and controversial
multi-year plan’ to give every student and teacher an iPad. So
far the district has spent $61 million on the project. Students in
58 schools were issued iPads.
These Apple Inc tablet computers include a curriculum
developed by education publishing and assessment service
Pearson PLC to align with the federal Common Core push for
consistent schooling standards across the states.
The iPad programme was budgeted at $1 billion – half of which
would go to Apple (Cupertino, California) and Pearson (Upper
Saddle River, New Jersey) and half toward upgrading Wi-Fi and
other infrastructure for the schools.
Now, citing a awed initial bidding process, the superintendent
of the Los Angeles Uni ed School District, John Deasy, has
frozen the contract and announced a fresh round of bidding,
set for completion by spring 2015. (“Los Angeles School District
Suspends Its iPad Programme,” 27
th
August)
As noted by Ms Ber eld, a school district inquiry into the original
bidding, rst reported by the
Los Angeles Times
and public radio
station
KPCC
, found that the rules for winning the contract
appeared to be tailored to products from Apple and Pearson
rather than to district needs. It also found that district o cials
were in regular contact with executives at Apple and Pearson,
which created an appearance of con ict even if no ethics
violations were apparent.
In a 25
th
August memo to school board members, Mr Deasy
acknowledged ‘lessons learned’ and said he saw in the fresh
start an opportunity ‘to take advantage of an ever-changing
marketplace and technology advances.’
Apple and Pearson are both expected to take part in the new
bidding.
Elsewhere in telecom . . .
Sanctions are causing problems for Russia’s Gazprom Space
Systems and its Yamal-601 satellite. Intended to provide
extended coverage of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa,
and South and Southeast Asia from an orbital position at
49° East, the satellite was to be launched early in 2016.
As reported by Chris Forrester on
Advanced-television.com
(1
st
September), di culty in procuring key components will
cause that date to slip.
The replacement for the Yamal-202 satellite is being built by
French-Italian aerospace company Thales Alenia Space and is
based on its Spacecom 4000-C4 platform.
The
Wall Street Journal
reported that Japan’s biggest
telecommunications group Nippon Telegraph & Telephone
Corp is spending billions of dollars on acquisitions in the
USA, which NTT executives say is at the forefront of IT-system
innovation.
By midsummer this year NTT group companies had already
acquired USA providers of data processing, network-and-
security services, and IT systems services; and NTT subsidiary
NTT Communications had spent $350 million for some 80
per cent of RagingWire Data Centers (Sacramento California).
According to Mayumi Negishi, writing on 30
th
August from
Tokyo, in its quest to gain expertise and a solid customer
base quickly, NTT is establishing a beachhead in Silicon
Valley: opening a research centre and showroom in Palo
Alto, poaching engineers, and joining with local companies
to make the information technology systems it designs more
user-friendly.
NTT board member Tsunehisa Okuno said in an interview
with the
Journal
that NTT’s acquisitions have helped
open doors, enabling it to win contracts to design and
maintain IT systems for companies looking for one-stop IT
systems management, including the Texas Department of
Transportation.
NTT executives also consider American know-how key to
their gaining corporate clients elsewhere, including Japan
and countries with emerging markets.
Bringing call centres back to the USA from
overseas is a trend fuelled, at least in part,
by a sense of customer preference
In buying into RagingWire Data Centres, of the USA, Nippon
Telegraph & Telephone exhibits good timing. Business writer
Frank Witsil of the
Detroit Free Press
has reported that, after years
Transatlantic Cable
Image: www.bigstockphoto.com Photographer Zsolt Ercsel
