Opinions on LGfL

[SchoolsBroadband]

and just to throw further petrol onto the fire

 

Budget broadband deal emails hidden from London schools - BBC News

 

Naughty LGFL and well done @exa_mark for standing up for schools and competition!

 

Dave

[XiJ]

and just to throw further petrol onto the fire

 

Budget broadband deal emails hidden from London schools - BBC News

 

Naughty LGFL and well done @exa_mark for standing up for schools and competition!

 

Dave

 

We find this happens quite a lot - and not just for broadband - although the quick renewal effort I've seen.

 

[Opendium_Steve]

and just to throw further petrol onto the fire

 

Budget broadband deal emails hidden from London schools - BBC News

 

Naughty LGFL and well done @exa_mark for standing up for schools and competition!

 

Not terribly surprised - we saw similar things in Hants a couple of years ago - very threatening behavior towards schools who were interested in leaving the county WAN, and lots of misinformation being thrown around in an effort to make them stay. I'm sad to say that it worked in a number of cases - we had several prospective customers who were put back in line by the LEA at the last minute. Probably should've gone to the press at the time like @exa_mark

[fiza]

I dont think I am breaking any rules by putting this link here to LGfLs response to the BBC article. Its on their press release page so is open to all to view.

 

http://www.lgfl.net/about/Pages/press.aspx

 

They end the press release with this ;

 

"Comparisons in price should always be made on the basis of like-for-like, not comparing a high capacity service with a cheaper, inferior substitute as if the two should cost the same."

[Opendium_Steve]

"Comparisons in price should always be made on the basis of like-for-like, not comparing a high capacity service with a cheaper, inferior substitute as if the two should cost the same."

 

What if you don't need the "superior" bits? In the original article it was pointed out that cheaper option didn't include as much stuff, but that schools often didn't want to use the missing stuff anyway.

[Zoom7000]

I would also like to know what these competitors do to help ensure safeguarding support. Something that LGfL and Atomwide take extremely seriously and the support they provide to schools on this is superb. And no, I don't mean simply providing an Internet filter. Safeguarding is a damn lot more complex than that!

[fiza]

@Zoom7000 - What do LGfL provide for safeguarding? I am not that familiar with the LGfL service but would be interested in finding out.

My school will be in a position to decide if we want to move away from LGfL in the next year. I havent been here that long to know the ins and outs of the services they provide for safeguarding.

[EXA_Mark]

I would also like to know what these competitors do to help ensure safeguarding support. Something that LGfL and Atomwide take extremely seriously and the support they provide to schools on this is superb. And no, I don't mean simply providing an Internet filter. Safeguarding is a damn lot more complex than that!

 

Speaking just for Exa, quite a lot actually. Bearing in mind we have been providing services to schools for virtually as long as LGFL, and as a software development house we developed our own filtering software, and networking ExaBGP tools (that are used by some of the biggest organisations in the world, and we made them Opensource so the whole internet community can benefit without cost).

 

Just to be clear we/I take safeguarding VERY seriously. Not only at the training, filtering and e-safety side, but at the network side (network attacks, malware and such) as well. And as it is us actually doing it, not going out to third parties (as is the case for the Grids).

 

Aside from "just" our filtering, we provide a lot of educational material on safeguarding, e-safety, Prevent and Ofsted assistance. We have also recently launched the Exa Foundation, which is free of charge to all Exa customers and provides onsite, or at one of our many national events, training directly to schools on a whole raft of subject matter, from computing through to e-safety and parental guidance. After all, children are only at school for a small percentage of their days and we feel we want to help educate outside of the school area too. Whilst the Foundation website and information is still in development, there is a link here to upcoming events http://bit.ly/1Oac1OK I am aware on here most booked at the moment are around the programming side, but the vast majority of those we are talking to at the moment are around E-safety and Prevent, but we will be having much wider training topics in the coming months.

 

Our partners also take part in the Foundation events and add even more expertise and guidance, again at no cost.

 

If any of our schools on here have not seen the recent October newsletter where we talk about the Foundation, and you would like us to put on an event/training just get in touch with the team or PM me.

 

Just to be clear too, all of the events we run for Exa schools have no sales element at all. None. Just teaching and training.

 

As I said earlier, if you are an Exa school, all of this is inclusive. So I don't think we do too bad, but we are always looking to do more, and will.

[SchoolsBroadband]

What if you don't need the "superior" bits? In the original article it was pointed out that cheaper option didn't include as much stuff, but that schools often didn't want to use the missing stuff anyway.

 

completely agree. Even if we do offer them the same high capacity lines we are on average 30% cheaper than LGFL and we can actually do SSL filtering and a whole host of other things too....

[SchoolsBroadband]

I would also like to know what these competitors do to help ensure safeguarding support. Something that LGfL and Atomwide take extremely seriously and the support they provide to schools on this is superb. And no, I don't mean simply providing an Internet filter. Safeguarding is a damn lot more complex than that!

 

Safeguarding is an extremely important part of any educational ISP's connectivity piece and we take this very seriously.

 

We work proactively with the police and other crime organisations which from time to time I have been personally involved in. I obviously can't comment on any specific cases but I can say we are active at looking for suspicious activity on our network from any individual.

 

We can also pro-actively allow web browsing reports to be sent to schools e-safety officers. This is thanks to Lightspeeds brilliant web content filtering and suspicious search query functionality.

 

On top of that we also arrange regular seminars for our existing customers and new ones. We are doing a number of these around Oxfordshire at the moment highlighting in particular the new Prevent Duty. If you'd like to come along for free then let me know and I will pass on the details.

 

We've also recently attended a new national Internet Safety Roadshow calleed "Barney and Echo" which is part of the Police Clubs of Great Britain. See Barney and Echo Internet Safety Roadshows - Schools Broadband Schools Broadband

 

Ultimately the school governors are liable as to who they decide to choose for their Internet safety and connectivity provider which is why companies like mine exist. I personally regularly attend events and speak to David Brown (HMI, Ofsted's national lead for ICT) who drives policy on e-safety for schools to ensure we as a responsible education focused ISP are doing everything we can to help protect children and are in line with government policy which I believe we are.

 

I also recently was invited to speak at Fortinets EMEA conference in France in front of over 200 telecom companies as we are a global case study for Fortinet on how we protect schools networks.

 

You may wish to take a look at Newsletters - Schools Broadband Schools Broadband which shows we're a lot more than just selling connectivity and a bit of filtering.

 

Comments of course welcomed but again you may wish to speak with our clients here on what they think about us.

 

David

[Opendium_Steve]

I would also like to know what these competitors do to help ensure safeguarding support. Something that LGfL and Atomwide take extremely seriously and the support they provide to schools on this is superb. And no, I don't mean simply providing an Internet filter. Safeguarding is a damn lot more complex than that!

 

We aren't an ISP - we supply filtering systems directly to schools, but we certainly take safeguarding very seriously. We have always worked very closely with our customers - feedback from customers, who are "at the coalface" as it were, directly drives the direction of our development efforts. Customers regularly tell us what tools would really improve safeguarding and we do our best to implement them.

 

To be honest, the term "internet filter" is a bit of a misnomer these days and we prefer "online safety system". When we started out 10 years ago, schools stuck a filter on their internet connection and that was as far as online safety went, but these days the filtering side of things is much less significant and providing good reporting is very important. Whatever filtering system you end up using, it needs to have the ability to automatically alert staff to any concerning behavior so that they can follow up with the students, either in person or by incorporating it into the lesson plans. The internet is so integrated into everyone's lives these days that this is a great help in picking up on things like self-harm, etc. as well as the more traditional online worries.

 

Our door is always open to provide help and answer questions, whether it be directly to our customers through our support lines, through public forums such as EduGeek or at the conferences we attend. We'll always welcome comments from anyone, but as we have never lost a customer of our online safety systems in the 10 years we've been operating, so I think we're probably getting most of it right. We have also worked with police on individual incidents, and it is always very useful to get insight from their perspective too.

 

I'm not going to say anything specifically about LGfL, but what I will say is that the various grids and LEAs around the country are quite variable - some are absolutely excellent, whilst some seem to try and get away with doing the bare minimum. At the end of the day, the schools themselves are the ones dealing directly with both the students and the technology. They are the ones who understand what is important, what needs improving and what they need help with. It is the responsibility of all of the organisations, whether they be the local grid, LEA or companies such as ourselves, @SchoolsBroadband, @exa_mark, etc. to ensure the schools have good information and the freedom of choice to do what is right for them. The kind of strong arm tactics and misinformation that we _do_ see occasionally to force schools one way or the other are unacceptable and those involved should be shamed very publicly.