Arizona Wired for Speed

Every public school in Arizona will have high-speed Web access by 2003, thanks to a deal between Qwest Communications International Inc. of Denver and the Arizona School Facilities Board.

Qwest won a $100 million contract to construct and support high-speed local area broadband networks that will provide Web access to Arizona's 228 public school districts, allowing educators to post lessons online. More than 800,000 students in grades K-12 will benefit, according to Qwest.

Qwest said the deal calls for it to manage every aspect of the project and provide a wide range of services, including network consulting, architecture, maintenance and security. The company will provide local area network services with speeds up to 100 megabits per second to each of the state's 1,222 schools by June 2003, allowing schools to run a variety of applications requiring significant bandwidth, including full-motion video streaming, e-learning, e-government and other online resources.