Utah Education and Telehealth Network asks Legislature to fund statewide conferencing, boost cybersecurity and classroom software

The Utah Education and Telehealth Network asked the Transportation Infrastructure Appropriations Subcommittee on Jan. 24 for funding to cover statewide video‑conferencing licenses, add cybersecurity staff serving technical colleges and buy additional instructional software for classrooms.

UETN Executive Director Spencer Jenkins told the panel the network provides Internet, video conferencing and telehealth connectivity to K‑12 districts, higher education, tech colleges, hundreds of libraries and more than 70 telehealth sites. "We are what we call a lease‑based network," Jenkins said. He said UETN contracts with private providers and UDOT for fiber routes and that traffic on the network is growing ‘‘roughly 20% each year.’’

The request includes a proposal to hold enterprise licensing with a specific vendor so all public and higher education institutions could use one statewide license. Jenkins said state procurement and combining K‑12 with higher education volume reduces the per‑seat cost. He described the proposal as UETN’s top priority and called it an attempt to lower per‑seat pricing by negotiating one enterprise agreement for the entire education enterprise. In describing scale, he said the statewide program would cover on the order of 67,000 seats across K‑12 and higher education.

Why it matters: UETN said combining institutional purchases could cut per‑seat costs;…