Internet service providers costs????

[tosca925]

We have just been informed that our ISP (throught the LEA) is putting up the cost of the 10Mb connection we have. Apparently for the last 2 years it has been heavily subsidised and now it the subsidisation has ended. The new cost is different to each school depended on its pupil size.

As we have 1500 kids ours is probably the highest in the LEA.

What roughly should we be payng for a 10mb connection, what do you lot pay?

[ChrisH]

Pfft I wish we had 10mb we have 2

[GrumbleDook]

We will be paying £13k as of April for a 10 meg line via the RBC ... but our present 2 meg is £14k via NTL.

[tosca925]

what is RBC?

[GrumbleDook]

Regional Broadband Consortium ... in our case EMBC. They are starting to standardise on 10 meg installations now (as per the minimum specs that have been recommend by DfES/Becta/etc) for the National Education Network.

We are hoping for a february installation, and our NTL connection drops in April ... but we should have 6-10 weeks of cross-over ... just in case :-)

[mark]

Same here tosca. The schools portion of the bill = £600,000.00 per year we're told here. Last we heard it was joped the money would be coming from GEST. Our school is lucky in that we're in a large Town with cheap broadband available. If we split the costs to more isolated schools would be catastrophic.

[andy]

We pay about 2k here for approx. 400 kids + 500K for ISP services (which gets taken off us before we see it - so we don't miss it!) Including, from somewhere, Sophos Not sure which speed we're on. Apparently, some schools in Lancs (not sure if I read it here or not) are on 100Meg!

Andy.

[Geoff]

Regional Broadband Consortium ... in our case EMBC. They are starting to standardise on 10 meg installations now (as per the minimum specs that have been recommend by DfES/Becta/etc) for the National Education Network.

Presumably thats the minimum for secondary schools and not primaries. Whats the minimum for primaries?

Apparently, some schools in Lancs (not sure if I read it here or not) are on 100Meg!

Here in Lancs, primaries get 2mb and secondaries get 100mb.

[StewartKnight]

100mb, we have Cleo as a provider, and I don't think I've ever had my full 10mb!

BTW, the geek code is getting on my nerves... I still haven't figured out what it's supposed to mean!!!

[Dos_Box]

@Geoff. Primary speeds will increase as newer wireless receivers are fitted once they have been upgraded from ISDN.
They will be getting at least 10 meg in the future. Don't ask me for timescales. It seems that we in Lancashire\Cumbria got it right by building our own infrastructure as we get to go faster than most other RBCs and have far fewer problems now. High schools with newer microwave receivers get 54Mbps and those who have got fibre connections are on 100Mbps (155Mbps is projected for future use).

[Dos_Box]

Same here tosca. The schools portion of the bill = £600,000.00 per year we're told here. Last we heard it was joped the money would be coming from GEST. Our school is lucky in that we're in a large Town with cheap broadband available. If we split the costs to more isolated schools would be catastrophic.

Be careful of cheap broadband. It will not fulfill your needs as a large school. ISP are very cost consious and will promise you the earth but once you satrt to have GB's per day throughput they will start to up the costs, once you add in contention (bandwidth sharing)at the local exchange into the figures you actually end up with quite a poor service. A previouse poste has stated that they pay 14k per annum for a 2Mbps leased line. This is about the right price, but considering many schools now need far higher bandwidth the price will skyrocket. We get many schools quoting home internet packages and their pricing at us, but they don't take into account that they will not apply to schools due to bandwidth usage, the need for filtering, e-mail, AV and all of the other things that many teachers overlook when they see perceived problems with their current connection and go on about how their home ISP has never let them down!.

P.S. Why is the argument always 'Its not like this when I try to do it at home'?

[StewartKnight]

are you sure you're getiing 100mb, according to my CLEO source you're on 10mb, same a Cumbria. Can you try this and see what it says?

[Dos_Box]

What you get and what it looks like are often not the same thing. Once you factor in enviromental variables, network config and end site\service speed than often the speed looks a lot lower than you have. Just because you have a car which can go 160MPH you often still have to stick to 70!

[StewartKnight]

however you spin it, theres a lot of difference between 10mb & 100mb though!

[andy]

BTW, the geek code is getting on my nerves... I still haven't figured out what it's supposed to mean!!!

www.ebb.org/ungeek/