The ENA Story
ENA recently displayed a poster in our Nashville office that briefly recounts the story of our company’s beginnings. It’s inspiring, if we do say so ourselves, and thought our customers might enjoy it.
It Begins and Ends With Kids
By 1996, a previously little-known, academic and defense system of interconnected computer networks had gone public with the advent of a browser called Netscape Navigator. The Internet, as the World Wide Web was increasingly called, was already a sensation by then and well on its way to becoming a ubiquitous part of modern life. The Internet was changing communication, changing education, changing commerce—in fact, revolutionizing every aspect of how human beings interact, a phenomenon unlike any the world had ever seen.
But most children were missing it.
Indeed, K–12 students across the country were shut out. Even if they had the resources to purchase the computers and other hardware, many schools hadn’t a local service provider, any infrastructure to speak of or the expertise to properly manage education-appropriate connectivity. Those that did have connectivity had it through dial-up modem.
A tiny company called ENA (short for Education Networks of America) stepped in to fill that gaping absence, creating the nation’s first statewide K–12 network for the State of Tennessee in 1996. Awarded a modest $125,000 project-management contract, ENA—a company consisting of a handful of full-time employees —along with 32 subcontractors and state officials lead the construction of the ConnecTEN Network to connect every Tennessee public school to the Internet. When state-budgeted funds neared their end, ENA took the reins in raising over $3 million in donations to supplement the build-out . The effort was a staggering success: the network was completed and all Tennessee schools were connected to the Internet.
As Governor Don Sundquist said of the network,
“The walls of the little red schoolhouse are expanding for every student in Tennessee.”
The following year, when the state opted to outsource the network, ENA won the state contract as the lowest and most cost-effective provider. ENA’s $74-million bid to provide schools with turnkey Internet services undercut the next lowest bidder by $112 million, thus beginning of long legacy of saving schools money. Today, ENA manages multiple statewide and district-wide networks, deploying comprehensive data, voice and video solutions as well as digital classroom resources to students, educators, librarians and patrons throughout the country. Millions of students later, with a footprint that extends across the U.S., ENA is still providing a superior service at a far better value—and we continue to do it for the kids.
The artwork you see to the left and right was created by students at Nashville’s Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet High School back in 1997. In ENA’s early years, students and 
teachers of this high school—located in the heart of downtown Nashville only a few blocks from ENA’s headquarters—often tested
and piloted solutions that ENA was developing. In these images, Hume-Fogg students from assorted grades offer their artistic interpretation of the concept of a Tennessee K–12 network.
ENA’s dedication to education, combined with a passion for service to students and educators that defies the conventional dictates of business, sets ENA apart. Empowered by converged networks and other solutions that save them time, money and frustration, ENA’s customers are free to focus on what matters most: preparing students, strengthening communities and leading educational enterprises into the 21st century.
