First Day Jitters: Pittsburgh Public Schools Experience Bandwidth Issues On First Day
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Students in the Pittsburgh Public Schools weren't the only ones experiencing first-day jitters.
The district experienced a hiccup when there was a maximum use of the bandwidth for students, who are learning remotely for the first nine weeks.
Even as remote learning got underway, the district is still passing out laptops for students.
According to the district, the bandwidth issues lasted for about two hours.
The district's public information officer says they experienced internet connectivity issues when one of their internet service providers bandwidth maxed out, causing them to have to manually switch the bandwidth to their secondary ISP.
The result was outages and a slow, unreliable connection to the district's online resources.
Verizon provided a statement regarding the outage:
"We have confirmed there are no issues with the Verizon wireline or wireless network in the area. We encourage anyone with connectivity issues to call customer support.
Pittsburgh Public Schools has said that Verizon was not the cause of the max out.
While the issues were noticeable, they did not last long.
"By mid-morning things were running really smoothly, both kids had a stable video connection and were doing pretty well with all their classes," said Carmon Rinehart, a parent of PPS students.
Parents are hoping that a smooth, stable connection lasts today and through the rest of the nine weeks.