Students outraged about slow internet at Riverside Secondary school

School wi-fi speed needs to be improved

By Zak Ilhareguy

At Riverside Secondary the internet is very important to many students and teachers as most of the work is done online. The slow internet can delay work and force students and teachers to use data instead as the internet speed is inadequate.

Many students have expressed their feelings about the slow internet at the school, as an example, “I spend most of every lunch hour in the cafeteria and everyone has noticed how terrible the internet is,” says Kai Meusy. In class, one may need to download programs or files but with the current internet speed it could take an extended amount of time, “I wish the internet was better, it takes so long to download files,” says Colin Lambert.

An interview with Mr. Brown has been made to obtain more insight on why the internet is slow and how the speed could be increased.

Riverside Secondary does not have fiber which is a type of modern internet cable that can process and send information very quickly, but “Telus wouldn’t give the district blackline, meaning they wouldn’t allow the data to go through their servers without looking at it,” says Mr. Brown. By Telus not allowing that, it violates a right, which is the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

By next year, the district should be implementing their own fiber which could increase the internet speed substantially but would be expensive. Currently there is an older internet in place which is slower.

The most that can be done now is replacing the wi-fi access points around the school for newer ones, for reference they are the white boxes on the walls and ceilings of classrooms. One can tell the difference between the older and newer ones by the colour of the light on them, the green ones are older, and the blue ones are newer.