As the calendar flips toward August, students only have a few more weeks until they head back to the classroom. It seems like every year we round up how vital Wi-Fi and connectivity are for education, but each year, we can’t help but spotlight just how much the investment continues to grow. 

Image by Antoni Shkraba

While virtual learning is in the rearview mirror for many, school systems are still finding creative ways to implement and expand Wi-Fi access. One driving force is the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF), an FCC program that allocated $7.171 billion to help schools across the country more easily afford these upgrades. Schools nationwide are using these funds to provide new devices for students and faculty and invest in more Wi-Fi hotspots, modems, routers, and other broadband infrastructure. 

In Kansas, Garden City Public Schools installed Wi-Fi on all school buses in the district. This move benefits students who don’t have consistent access to Wi-Fi at home, who wish to get a jumpstart on their homework during the bus ride home or finish it just in the nick of time on the ride to school. Wayne Township School District in New Jersey has invested over $850,000 to reimburse the cost of providing tech and broadband services to students and staff who would’ve otherwise gone without internet access. Meanwhile, Mesquite Independent School District in Texas will receive $82.3 million from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, which will create a 24-7 virtual tutoring platform to give students extra help on homework and standardized test prep. 

Extensive Wi-Fi investments are also happening at the higher levels of education. In June, the University of Michigan announced that over the last eight months, it worked to replace more than 16,000 wireless access points to upgrade its university-wide network to Wi-Fi 6E capabilities — and is believed to be the first U.S. university to do so. The new hardware uses the 6 GHz band to open up more channels and provide students and staff with faster, lower latency connectivity that can support even more devices than Wi-Fi 5, the previous standard.

Wi-Fi innovation is improving education at every level and it is paramount that students continue to have access to high-speed, wireless internet throughout their educational careers. There is work to be done, but universities, federal agencies and school districts are seeing the long-term value in making investments to ensure a connected future in the classroom.