Issues with mobile Broadband Dongles for students

[DavidHolderness]

Hi All.

 

The school I work for deals with a large number of young people who are educated under an alternative model. Namely, they are given access to an "online classroom" which allows them to access all of their GCSE Subjects. The online classroom seems to work ok, that's not the issue here.

 

 

In order to ensure all young people have access to their provision, the school provides notebooks and mobile broadband dongles with 5gb of data pre allocated. Much of this was done before my time and the issues surrounding this have come to a head. All of the new notebooks we are providing are locked down with usage limits and website filtering to prevent inappropriate use, however students are removing the dongles, plugging them into other machines and racking up huge bills (upto several hundred pounds in some cases!).

I have spoken to the dongle provider and they say there is a lag between when the network records the data, so even though they are cut off when they go above the allocated limit, they still have time to go even further over before being cut off.

 

Does anyone have any experience or ideas surrounding what steps i could take to solve this? I am drawing a blank.

 

Thanks

 

DH

[Michael]

Interesting problem - you could argue then that despite being allegedly restricted to 5GB, this isn't entirely accurate? I'm just thinking how do the big mobile phone companies do it?

 

Maybe the restriction should/could be implemented at 4.5GB, so it's then impossible to go over the real 5GB limit?

[DavidHolderness]

Hi Michael Thanks for the reply.

 

Our business manager has indeed tried to make this argument, however when it went to tender all the companies said the same - we are liable for any overspend. However setting an artificially low break point is a great idea - I will run them up and see if this is possible.

 

My other inelegant solution is to switch everyone to p&g and auto top up 5gb every month, our provider (who we are locked in with, because of course) is making that very difficult.

 

My only other thoughts is to tether dongles to individual machines however i'm not sure if that is possible.

 

Thanks

 

DH

[Michael]

Hi Michael Thanks for the reply.

 

Our business manager has indeed tried to make this argument, however when it went to tender all the companies said the same - we are liable for any overspend. However setting an artificially low break point is a great idea - I will run them up and see if this is possible.

 

My other inelegant solution is to switch everyone to p&g and auto top up 5gb every month, our provider (who we are locked in with, because of course) is making that very difficult.

 

My only other thoughts is to tether dongles to individual machines however i'm not sure if that is possible.

 

Thanks

 

DH

 

I think that's the only realistic solution - artificially reduce the quota making it impossible to go over the real limit. You could pair dongles and notebooks (in theory), but it could be very time consuming and expensive, say you restricted it based on the dongle's mac address... but of course each dongle has a unique mac address. Reducing the quota is the only realistic/central solution, which logically should be possible.

[DavidHolderness]

I suspected that pairing the dongles would be time prohibitive - thanks for saving me time exploring going down that route!

The more i think of the low usage limit idea the more i like it, thankyou very much!

[SchoolsBroadband]

with the likes of O2 and Vodafone once you hit a certain limit then the traffic should be automatically throttled so you can't rack up a huge bill. I'm sure that Ofcom imposed a "bill shock" clause which could come to effect in your case. I understand why your current provider may only be able to do it the next day as they'll get their data log files daily so if they go over it in that day then they won't until the next if they are buying pay as you use data.

 

We are an O2 Wholesale partner and if you want a 5Gig data limit then that's what you get and you can't go over it. If you hit the limit a text is automatically sent to the sim card in the dongle altering you of hitting your limit.

 

Dave

[DavidHolderness]

Hi Dave

 

Thanks for the reply.

What i feel is happening is the partner is buying a pool of data from o2, then reselling it to us in 5GB chunks. Any cut offs are then done by the partner, which explains the delay (as much as 3 days in one case!) in cutting off when a student goes over,does this seem likely?

 

DH

[SchoolsBroadband]

probably not no. O2 don't structure their data like that.

[Edu-IT]

My other inelegant solution is to switch everyone to p&g and auto top up 5gb every month, our provider (who we are locked in with, because of course) is making that very difficult.

If it's an option you have, I'd go with this. They can make it as difficult as they like but if you request it, they've got to do it.