With the school year getting under way, Mediacom Communications Corp. has announced that it's bringing gigabit speeds to schools in the Burlington Community School District of Iowa. Noting its commitment to connecting anchor institutions like schools and libraries, Mediacom said the deployment would reach 15 individual locations and bring service to 4,000 students in the region. Part of the need for the high-capacity network comes from the fact that students in grades 6-12 in the Burlington district are given access to connected devices. At that level, the volume of users becomes an issue when bandwidth resources are limited.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is on a roll with its GigaPower launches, and it wants the whole world to know. The telco released a map this week highlighting regions where it has already deployed gigabit service, where construction is underway and where there are plans for future gigabit rollouts. Currently, service is available in 15 markets, primarily spread across Texas and the southeastern US.

— Mari Silbey, Senior Editor, Cable/Video, Light Reading