Thanks to the federal government increasing technology funding for schools through the E-Rate program, solution providers have an unprecedented opportunity to make hay in the K-12 space. And Aruba Networks (ARUN) is hoping to be a part of that.

The wireless networking vendor announced at its annual Atmosphere partner conference a K-12 initiative that includes 802.11ac 802.11 ac Wi-Fi priced at $3 per student, single SKU controller bundles and a new E-Rate-eligible Airwave subscription.

“This is ‘once in a career spending’ for many of our partners, so we wanted to come up with something impactful,” said Jim Harold, vice president of North American Channels at Aruba. “What we designed is a simple, cost-effective story to school districts with  802.11ac for $3 a student.”

The “once in a career spending” Harold referred to is the significant bump in E-Rate funding: In December the Federal Communications Commission voted to increase fundng for E-Rate to a whopping $3.9 billion—more than double its prevous funding of $1.5 billion.

The result so far has been a flood of interest from school districts looking to use E-Rate dollars to update or even install a wireless network.

“With so many schools looking at E-Rate, we wanted to make the story simple—the quoting and understanding the product simple—and take a few extra products and make sure they are E-Rate-eligible,” Harold said.

So, with the help of its Partner Advisory Council, Aruba came up with a special price for the 802.11ac access point (AP) that is both attractive to customers and margin-friendly for partners. “That’s how we came up with wireless at $3 per student—it’s based on an average number of students in an E-Rate request for proposal,” he said.

Also part of the promotion is a controller bundle for school districts that chose to use a controller in the wireless network. The bundle includes controllers, all of the license and maintenance under one SKU.

Along with that, Aruba created a new SKU for its AirWave management console to make it E-Rate eligible, further simplifying the process for partners.

“The new SKU is for an AirWave subscription specifically for k-12. AirWave has always been a ‘buy it once and it’s yours’ offering, but this new SKU is a subscription, so it’s eligible for E-Rate funding,” Harold said.

The services model potentially could move into other markets if successful, he added. “We’re looking into ways to augment managed services that partners have built out.”

Not stopping there, the company also is offering the resources of an E-Rate expert,  Dan Rivera, to help partners find even greater opportunity in the K-12 space.

“As the E-Rate season was heating up our PAC members said they wanted access to higher level expertise. So we brought on Dan as a consultant to help with assistance about the rules of E-Rate, advice on proposals, etc. With E-Rate funding being such an opportunity, Dan has been with us to interpret and evaluate.”

Clearly, E-Rate is a great opportunity for school districts to build out a top-notch network for their students. What Aruba has done to help its partners capitalize on the opportunities E-Rate brings also could only be described as top-notch.