Opinions on LGfL

[10101010]

Yep that's another vote against lgfl for you, I've always like the lightspeed product as well

[SchoolsBroadband]

I wonder who that could be!?

 

 

Thanks again for the updates, it sounds like I might need to get in contact with a certain sponsor! If I've guessed right, I was planning to approach them for a quote anyhow. As we're not currently a LGfL school, we have most of their offerings in place anyway (Desktop AV is sold to us through County at a very low cost, Email is though O365 and I've no interest in changing that (again), and we have SECURUS onsite).

 

But I'll certainly not rule out LGfL, and once I've got some quotes together it'll come down to value for money, as it usually does.

[rad]

We are looking at renewing with LGFL but the one concern is web filtering.

I also use Mail Protect and Reports but if I really need to see what a kid did I just change their password and log on as them. I play the dumb card when they come in my office.

[Nodrog]

I guess part of the problem they have with web filtering is because they have an un-contended network the log files are massive hence it takes time. On the occasions where I have had issues of esafety I call there help desk, explain what I’m after and they run log reporting for me there and then. I’m told the new filter system they talk about in the flyer that came with the offer address this and also ssl filtering. ‘Value for money’ is different to ‘as cheap as possible’

[Zoom7000]

I've just signed up for the 5 year extension and free upgrade to 200Mbps. In the early days, Atomwide were a bit difficult to deal with, but, I've since made some good relationships at Atomwide in several of the departments and I can safely say they have helped me with any issues I've had in a very prompt manner over the course of the last few years. The only major issue I have had over the last few years was a week's worth of downtime at my last school due to "rodent damage" to the fibre a few miles away from school. This of course wasn't their fault and pretty much kicked out the entire surrounding area, homes and businesses alike!

 

I attended the LGfL Technician's Conference at their Orpington HQ last June and it was very enlightening and was indeed a very good opportunity to share opinions on experiences and give feedback on improvements and ways forward with the service as a whole. I would definitely recommend it for all schools that can afford it. I've also since amalgamated a lot of our internal services to LGfL provisions too. WiFi, VoIP, AutoText and we'll be implementing their CCTV system in the near future too. It helps to have everything under 1 banner and makes support a lot easier.

[minimoo]

As an aside, I believe you can also ask virgin to do a quote for a connection directly to compare bt vs virgin vs lgfl.

 

If you take a 3 year view, and only using LGfL for broadband (and not making use of their extra services), I'm thinking it probably comes in more expensive. I believe a business can get virgin fibre for around 7-10k and Sophos in education i'd expect to be around 2.0-2.5k for 1 year - with discounts for longer. A fortinet firewall or similar would probably work out around 2k/year over 3 weeks... My maths is saying you'd come in slightly cheaper then the LGfL offering. IF however you make use of audiocentral, videocentral, and the resources they try and purchase... I suspect the argument goes the other direction.

 

We currently sit on the LGfL and put our own firewall in between atomwide/lgfl and us, so you run the risk of paying for services that are not used, whilst also paying for 2 firewalls.

 

In terms of "I’m told the new filter system they talk about in the flyer that came with the offer address this and also ssl filtering" - I know they've been looking at something, but waiting to see how that works - in my eyes, there's two ways you can filter SSL traffic:

 

a) Look at the certificate that's getting passed around at the start of the conversation.

 

b) decrypt, inspect, reencrypt / pass-through traffic in some manner. In this case, you'd need to trust the certificate doing that - something that I'd not want to outsource. It's also something that one may need to warn end users that's being done if their personal passwords/bank details etc are going through that sort of system.

[SchoolsBroadband]

As an aside, I believe you can also ask virgin to do a quote for a connection directly to compare bt vs virgin vs lgfl.

 

If you take a 3 year view, and only using LGfL for broadband (and not making use of their extra services), I'm thinking it probably comes in more expensive. I believe a business can get virgin fibre for around 7-10k and Sophos in education i'd expect to be around 2.0-2.5k for 1 year - with discounts for longer. A fortinet firewall or similar would probably work out around 2k/year over 3 weeks... My maths is saying you'd come in slightly cheaper then the LGfL offering. IF however you make use of audiocentral, videocentral, and the resources they try and purchase... I suspect the argument goes the other direction.

 

We currently sit on the LGfL and put our own firewall in between atomwide/lgfl and us, so you run the risk of paying for services that are not used, whilst also paying for 2 firewalls.

 

In terms of "I’m told the new filter system they talk about in the flyer that came with the offer address this and also ssl filtering" - I know they've been looking at something, but waiting to see how that works - in my eyes, there's two ways you can filter SSL traffic:

 

a) Look at the certificate that's getting passed around at the start of the conversation.

 

b) decrypt, inspect, reencrypt / pass-through traffic in some manner. In this case, you'd need to trust the certificate doing that - something that I'd not want to outsource. It's also something that one may need to warn end users that's being done if their personal passwords/bank details etc are going through that sort of system.

 

Can LGFL not do SSL filtering at the moment and sort out the recent issue with google by doing a man in the middle attack?

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[minimoo]

I think they may be looking to add something like that, but can't atm. To do a MITM attack - I believe you'd would need to force people to trust a certificate on their device(s)?

 

As you are probably in a better position then me to answer this - am I right with my estimate of a internet link being 7-10k for say a 200-300 mbps link (if you ignore cost of firewalls etc/filtering / other optional extras). I see on your website Schools Broadband | Prices Schools Broadband you state that a leased line starts at 6495, but don't say any speeds...

[SchoolsBroadband]

I think they may be looking to add something like that, but can't atm. To do a MITM attack - I believe you'd would need to force people to trust a certificate on their device(s)?

 

As you are probably in a better position then me to answer this - am I right with my estimate of a internet link being 7-10k for say a 200-300 mbps link (if you ignore cost of firewalls etc/filtering / other optional extras). I see on your website Schools Broadband | Prices Schools Broadband you state that a leased line starts at 6495, but don't say any speeds...

 

Hi @minimoo,

 

we need to change that as leased lines actually start at a lot less than that. For a primary school in London we can do 200Mbit leased lines for around the £6k mark, secondary schools a bit more but not much if you don't take our filtering and security packages. Most schools do though as you get Lightspeed content filtering and your own virtual Fortigate firewall on our high availability cloud based clusters.

 

We guarantee to beat LGFL's pricing.

 

Your're correct ref MITM attacks. It really surprises me that LGFL being an RBC they can't support SSL based filtering as this leaves all the pupils at risk.

 

if you'd like a quote let me know and Ill get one sent over.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[EXA_Mark]

One very obvious question. Do you really want five year contracts?

 

The price of fibre in the past three years alone has nearly halved and Openreach have already committed to further cuts next year too.

 

Whilst the wholesale price of the fibre optic is only one part of the cost, the price drops on 100Mbps and 1Gbps capacity across OpenReach, which is one of the main paths all ISPs use (yes, including Virgin and Talk Talk), has dropped thousands in the past year alone.

 

If you want to ensure you are getting the best value for money I would recommend you do not take a contract longer than three years from ANYONE (us included). And I really wouldn't be concerned at the argument of "well you know that your budget is fixed and prices cannot go up". In 12 years (we've just gone into our 13th year) we have never increased the price of connectivity once (not even by inflation).

[SchoolsBroadband]

I completely agree with @exa_mark here in the comms industry prices go one way and that's down. Sure you can get better prices today for a long 5 year contract but the industry and technology changes.

 

I gave a presentation after LGFL to a lot of schools the other day and was very concerned that he and I'm thus presuming most of LGFL as a whole didn't even know what G.fast was. This will completely change everything again and give much faster speeds for a fraction of the cost of leased lines today.

 

I'd also debate that LGFL are a not for profit organisation. Certainly the Atomwide directors took dividends of £900k last year which I'm presuming came mostly from doing business with LGFL so someone is certainly making a rather healthy profit from LGFL........

 

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/02142875/filing-history and click on accounts from 29 Dec 2014

[Zoom7000]

@SchoolsBroadband, you seem to be forgetting that for the price that LGfL charge, you aren't just paying for a broadband connection. For the price of the 200Mbps connection itself (Approx: £7k for my primary school) you are getting teaching and learning content worth almost that price alone. In addition to all of this, you get free Sophos Enterprise Anti-Virus for your school and for parents and pupils. You get a free communication app for all parents, secure cloud storage per pupil, AD Synchronised logins with LGfL USOs, LGfL secure hosted Staff Email and Student Email with spam filtering, secure file transfer between LGfL schools, free telephone calls between LGfL schools (if you take up their VoIP service) All of the equipment is supported by Atomwide and in the event of equipment failure, their turn around is usually within a day or less. There are loads of other bits and bobs included in the price which I can't remember off the top of my head nor do I have the time to list.

 

I'd like to see what Anti-Virus, managed email system and curriculum content you offer by comparison. You say that you'd question that the LGfL are a not for profit organisation just because Atomwide made a dividend payment? Atomwide have never claimed to be a not for profit organisation. Just because they do business with them, doesn't mean you can question the not for profit status. They get their broadband from Virgin Media. Are you gonna question their shareholder payouts too?

Edited October 19, 2015 by Zoom7000

[SchoolsBroadband]

@SchoolsBroadband, you seem to be forgetting that for the price that LGfL charge, you aren't just paying for a broadband connection. For the price of the 200Mbps connection itself (Approx: £7k for my primary school) you are getting teaching and learning content worth almost that price alone. In addition to all of this, you get free Sophos Enterprise Anti-Virus for your school and for parents and pupils. You get a free communication app for all parents, secure cloud storage per pupil, AD Synchronised logins with LGfL USOs, LGfL secure hosted Staff Email and Student Email with spam filtering, secure file transfer between LGfL schools, free telephone calls between LGfL schools (if you take up their VoIP service) All of the equipment is supported by Atomwide and in the event of equipment failure, their turn around is usually within a day or less. There are loads of other bits and bobs included in the price which I can't remember off the top of my head nor do I have the time to list.

 

I'd like to see what Anti-Virus, managed email system and curriculum content you offer by comparison. You say that you'd question that the LGfL are a not for profit organisation just because Atomwide made a dividend payment? Atomwide have never claimed to be a not for profit organisation. Just because they do business with them, doesn't mean you can question the not for profit status. They get their broadband from Virgin Media. Are you gonna question their shareholder payouts too?

@Zoom7000 I'm not forgetting that at all. We and our friends at Exa offer the same or similar via Microsoft or Google which is FOC. Also we do all the VoIP, secure file transfer etc as standard too. Just take a look at our website and what's in the standard product. In my opinion (and the opinion of many schools from not just LGFL but other GFL's) the content side of things doesn't overly matter as the biggest resource in the world is the Internet with most of what schools need on there. £7kpa for teaching and learning content??!?!?!

 

Lightspeed offer's its Teacher Dashboard which incorporates a lot of learning material. You are most likely correct that Atomwide have not claimed to be a not for profit organisation but I have seen LGFL present at how they are 100% not for profit and all profits are ploughed back into the network and the solution. In my opinion this is not transparency at all. When using Virgin Media any provider has to use them as they have the fibre in the ground to allow the connection. Every provider does not have to use Atomwide's services so I don't think you are comparing apples with apples there.

 

We offer the Forticlient end point security which links into our hosted Fortigate UTM product seamlessly and Office 365 as email as standard.

 

That's all I'm going to say on the matter as I do not wish to be drawn into any kind of flame war argument. The facts are there for all to see and people are clever enough to make their own judgement call on it.

 

I will not respond to any further points raised

 

Dave

[minimoo]

@Zoom7000 - I might be wrong, but I think there's more content (curriculum wise) geared at primaries. At least - and it might be unique to the type of school we are - our staff don't seem to be that interested in the content for secondary, and as the corporate types just said - some of the offering's e.g. MS/google are FOC. In terms of sophos if you have 500+ pc's and are able to sign up for >1 year at a time to get a discount, 500 pc's should be around 1500/year.

 

It does however come down to how much you use their versions of the various offerings - we are currently looking to sign up for google docs / office 365 - and will probably do it direct with Microsoft / Google. It'll be less work for us to sync against our AD users - as we have some users in our AD who do not have a USO.

 

What is a shame is that LGfL do not break up their offering. I suspect that the LGfL broadband price has a good chance of beating whatever David can offer - however once you throw in the development of solutions like AD sync, the my drive service etc (which has to be paid for) and then the curriculum content, the price jumps right up.

[fiza]

@minimoo - I have to agree with you on the content. We are a Secondary and I have advertised the LGfL offerings to all Depts many times but no one uses the extras.

[Phoenix_IT]

Interesting reading peoples view on here, I think the old adage of "you can lead a horse to water" comes to mind, the lgfl content is very good and constantly being updated but i find it is mostly NQT's that like to use it, old school teachers are very stuck in their ways of finding their own materials, but lets face it, not all our teachers are IT literate.

 

With regards to the lgfl connections, I think they offer great value for money and admit out of all the schools I support those with lgfl connections are much stabler and it is reassuring to know they take the security of schools networks seriously. For my tuppence worth I am recommending my schools go with the new offerings from lgfl, and although I agree they may not be the cheapest some times I still stand firm they offer the best value for money.

 

I am a little concerned though at the 'personal' views of a supplier on this post though, as I would expect you to be bias to your own products, but surely products should sell themselves rather than resort to attacking competitors - reminds me of the conservatives vs labour campaigns lol

[SchoolsBroadband]

@Phoenix_IT, I'm not attacking LGFL just pointing things out for people so they can make their own informed decision.

 

If you'd seen some of the letters sent to schools in Hillingdon from LGFL about one of our / their competitors it'd make you bawk :-/

 

We've enough people on Edugeek to know what we're about and I do believe our product sells itself hence why we're being successful at the moment. Just ask all of our many clients on here!

 

Dave

[Phoenix_IT]

Just my personal view, I'm not a fan of those tactics, and I pride myself on always recommending the best value services to my customers, I don't even sell my own services on here, just offer words of advice for school techies. As you say, there are enough people on here, and we'll never all agree with each others views as we all have different experiences

[Zoom7000]

@Zoom7000We and our friends at Exa offer the same or similar via Microsoft or Google which is FOC. Also we do all the VoIP, secure file transfer etc as standard too. Just take a look at our website and what's in the standard product.

 

By saying you're offering the same via Office 365 and/or Google Apps is not actually offering anything at all. You aren't offering these services, Microsoft and Google are. Advertising it as part of your bundle is just false advertising. One does not need to buy in to your services to be able to get those products, they are free for all.

 

In my opinion (and the opinion of many schools from not just LGFL but other GFL's) the content side of things doesn't overly matter as the biggest resource in the world is the Internet with most of what schools need on there. £7kpa for teaching and learning content??!?!?!

 

The Internet is the biggest resource in the world? Well, by that chain of thought, why do we bother with anything? You've just trounced on anyone out there trying to sell any type of teaching resource whatsoever! Hell, why do we even bother with schools and learning? You might as well just Google it! Have you tried teaching a subject? You can't just Google lesson plans and resources and hope for the best. The resources LGfL and other content providers put out there are full frameworks to take you from A - Z, incorporating all your needed resources with assessment methods included. Most London LAs work closely with the LGfL and curriculum advisors use their content to help schools to plan. The LGfL also go way deeper beyond just a broadband connection by highlighting key changes in education policies to ensure that schools are adhering to and protecting their pupils and their data.

 

I'm not trying to start a flame war with you or anyone, but there is healthy competition and then there is just plain out trying to crap on your competition with the unprofessional attacks.

[10101010]

Interestingly, when I was contacted by a 'certain supplier', their first quote was slightly more than LGFL, they then asked how much LGFL was quoting??? That got my back up straight away, I informed them I do not operate in that manner, but thanked them anyway for their time. By the next day, (' and after having a word with his senior colleagues ') they had just acquired a datacenter in my area and low and behold I received a new and improved quote. Edited October 20, 2015 by 10101010

[SchoolsBroadband]

Interestingly, when I was contacted by a 'certain supplier', their first quote was slightly more than LGFL, they then asked how much LGFL was quoting??? That got my back up straight away, I informed them I do not operate in that manner, but thanked them anyway for their time. By the next day, (' and after having a word with his senior colleagues ') they had just acquired a datacenter in my area and low and behold I received a new and improved quote.

 

Yes,

 

I'd been contemplating opening a new POP / data centre in West London so am going to be doing so which enables us to use a different product from Virgin Media wholesale which thus brings down our buy prices so we can pass them onto our prospective customers hence the change in price.

 

It's quite exciting for us as this will be our 5th POP / data centre in the UK and enables us to cover much more of London at a much better price, particularly with anything over 100Mbit. The POP will be connected by dark fibre allowing the use of multiple wavelengths connecting back to our national network.

 

Demand drives innovation and that is what we've just done so London customers get access to very big bandwidths at very good prices.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[EXA_Mark]

I'm not trying to start a flame war with you or anyone, but there is healthy competition and then there is just plain out trying to crap on your competition with the unprofessional attacks.

 

Couldn't agree more. We've just entered our 13th year of providing connectivity and filtering into schools, and look after thousands of schools all over the UK, and we have never felt the need to get into unprofessional attacks. Does that mean that we won't try to get over our benefits over the competition, no of course not, but there are right ways and wrong ways to do it. Nor have we ever felt a need to block our customers from receiving emails from competitors contacting our customers, or pushing out letters to our schools that are full of scare-mongering and massively intentional (I believe) factual inaccuracies, and as for not for profit ventures, it's very easy to see (via companies house) just whether those organisations really are truly not for profit, and are they paying themselves hidden benefits by say pensions or companies cars (not that I am saying this particular company is, just an example).

 

I have kept relatively quiet on here for a few days about this, but there really are some underhand tactics going on, and not from the competitors. Don't get me wrong, this is not the first time I've seen it in my 16 + years of working in the industry,nor will it be the last. After all people are trying to protect their livelihoods. I just have no time whatsoever for the pretense that some organisations claim to be doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. We sell our products at a profit, which we reinvest year on year, & we come to work as individuals to get paid. As do all the companies that sell via organisations such as the LGFL and other "not for profit" companies. All the not for profit means, in these cases is they are not ADDING any extra margin onto the costs they get from their suppliers, except of course to cover things such as salaries, marketing & self promotion, pensions, buildings, running costs and other such things. In fact in many ways the same as most companies, making sure you are not running at a loss.

 

As a company we have and continue to pass on at cost (no margin for us at all) all of the third party products we use, such as Stormshield, Fortinet and various AV options. Does that make us not for profit too? Of course not.

 

The whole point of this thread was about peoples opinions on this particular GFL (and it could be any to be fair), and this somehow got into all of the other bits. The simple fact is, if organisations, such as LGFL offered a brilliant service, at an unbeatable price, there would be no discussion to be had. If they gave the flexibility of contracts, such as one year (as is our standard) so their customers can chose to stay IF they want to, not because they have to, and the service continued to be unmatched, they would have nothing to be concerned about.

 

What there should be is open and fair competition for all. For schools, and other organisations to be able to fairly, and easily, compare offerings, without prejudice and ensure that they get value for money. After all, there is no point paying for all the bells and whistles (beyond what you need) if you are never going to use them. That's just good financial practice surely.

 

Rant done. Apologies to all.

[SchoolsBroadband]

here here.

 

Latest example. Letter sent out a couple of weeks from a GFL to all schools in a Borough. You have until 23rd October to either cancel your contract or it auto renews for another 12 months after 31st March 2016 or sign here now for a new 5 year contract.

 

2 weeks notice?!?!!?!?! Choice?!?!?! competition?!?!!? It's impossible to do a proper procurement exercise in that time.

 

That's it no more from me otherwise I will get angry

[simpsonj]

In fairness, it's not just GfL that have given short time spans to organize big projects. Oxfordshire CC gave us a year to move broadband provider, and gave lots of guidance and setup a conference to talk it through which was very reasonable. However, they gave us 3 months to transfer our MIS system, and even less than that for email...

 

In any case, a lot of food for thought from the thread. From my standpoint, I need to find out exactly what our SLT expects from the school's ISP in terms of monitoring, filtering, BYOD, speed and bandwidth. I'm glad to see people are happy with the LGfL, and that very much makes it an option. Whether it's the most cost effective option will depend on the school's expectations. An awful lot of what LGfL offers we already have, so the added value that LGfL offers, on the face of it, might not be worth much to us, but a lot more to another school perhaps.

 

Thankfully I do have a fair amount of time to decide this, and I'm not being rushed by any company to make a decision

[Phoenix_IT]

Ive seen loads of companies give short notice or none at all and loads of the big named players as well that haven't even been discussed on this thread yet.

 

As you say the value add is for every school to decide the options are there with all suppliers we just need impartial views on here rather than suppliers IMHO