Overton Schools Receiving Cell Service Boosters

Cell Phone Boosters to help Overton County Schools deal with emergencies will soon be installed at every school in the district.

Technology Supervisor Brent Thrasher said these boosters will be a significant upgrade over the cell service repeaters currently located at some of their more rural schools. Thrasher said they have a battery backup to ensure school staff or first responders have reception in case of a power outage.

“One thing to keep in mind, it’s only AT&T,” Thrasher said. “But that’s the service that they use. So in addition, it provides AT&T service but there’s a secondary band that is dedicated for first responders and they utilize that. So they kind of have like this high priority channel.”

Board Member James Clouse said teachers can register as first responders with the program to access the high priority cell service. Thrasher said the installation process should be straightforward and completed across the district within the next month.

“They connect with just a regular Ethernet connection to our system,” Thrasher said. “So once those are mounted they should be up and running. The representative from FirstNet that I spoke with, she said they had them programmed and so once we get them plugged up they should be live at that moment.”

Thrasher said the system can be configured to turn off the general AT&T signal in case they want to further prioritize first responders.

“That was my intent, was to leave it to where it will just broadcast the AT&T signal to cover in those schools so I think that’ll be a benefit,” Thrasher said.

Thrasher said the entire system is free for the district because it came about through a deal FirstNet has with the Livingston Police Department. Thrasher said they could also reach out to Verizon to see if they would be interested in putting a signal booster in for their service as well.