Wi-Fi Tower Upgrades

Wi-Fi Tower Upgrades
Posted on 11/13/2020
a drone shot of one of the district Wi-Fi towers

Update 12/4/2020:

Due to tower equipment shipment delays, upgrades to the Wi-Fi towers have been postponed. More information will be made available as the new upgrade dates are determined. Until then remote learning, Wi-Fi router distribution, and hotspot distribution will continue as usual.


During the week of December 7th through the 11th, Castleberry ISD will be upgrading the equipment on our Wi-Fi towers to provide increased coverage and faster connectivity of the district's at-home wireless Internet service. During this timeframe, the Wi-Fi towers will be taken offline in order to perform the upgrades. The at-home Wi-Fi network is expected to be back online by Wednesday, December 16th. Once the upgrade is complete, new user equipment will be issued to students, so they can connect to the upgraded network.

Students who are learning remotely and are utilizing the district’s current Wi-Fi network will need another form of Internet connectivity while the towers are offline during the upgrade process. The district has purchased AT&T hotspots that will be issued to students during this time. The hotspots will be issued to families beginning Wednesday, December 2nd. Once the tower upgrades are complete, students will be required to return the hotspots, so they can be re-issued to families who live outside the tower coverage area and rely on the hotspots for connectivity. Students who are currently using an AT&T hotspot will continue using those same hotspots during the upgrade outage.

During the upgrade process, hotspot priority will be granted to remote learners. After the upgrade, hotspot priority will return to both remote and in-person students who live outside of the coverage area. This is to ensure that every student has access to the Internet throughout the school year.

New user equipment will be required to access the upgraded Wi-Fi network. All students who will be issued an AT&T hotspot or who have an old Castleberry Wi-Fi router, must return the old equipment to their campus in order to receive the new equipment. More information will be provided as we move closer to the outage date. Your campus one-to-one coordinator will be the primary point of contact for questions and issues related to this change.