Schools Broadband or RM Broadband?

[deano3693]

What are people's thoughts? If you have to choose who would you go for? Either way it would be on a 3 year contract so we need to make the right choice!

 

Thanks,

 

Dean.

[synaesthesia]

Out of the two, I'd probably suggest Schools Broadband. They've certainly had issues but they don't break promises they make to rectify. I don't see RM even lasting 3 years.

[deano]

Does the service have to be hosted?

[snagrat]

Schools Broadband definitely

[sparkeh]

Neither. Why are you limited to those two?

[Blue_Cookeh]

I mean out of those two I'd go with SchoolsBroadband. Yes they've had their problems but they have seemed to solve them nowadays.

 

I think if I were doing our broadband again I'd be choosing Zen Internet and using Sophos UTM for onsite filtering.

[Fazza]

If I had to make a choice between the two I think I'd quit my job and go elsewhere!! The right choice is someone else like Exa.net

 

You get what you pay for.

[clockend25]

Schools Broadband. As mentioned, don't think I'd be buying in to any RM Services these days; they seem to be sinking fast.

 

SB have been largely rock solid for us for a number of years, and their pricing is very decent on a proper sized contract.

[HBPS]

+1 schoolsbroadband

[Shadow_Walker]

RM Broadband had it here for last 2 years and only had 1/2 a day downtime in that period.

[localzuk]

When comparing the 2, make sure you're getting like for like. My experience with RM's services (via SWGfL), was that they didn't offer you a 1:1 uncontended connection.

[sparkeh]

When comparing the 2, make sure you're getting like for like. My experience with RM's services (via SWGfL), was that they didn't offer you a 1:1 uncontended connection.

Depends on which product you go for but that is on offer from RM.

[simpsonj]

RM Broadband here, with a Smoothwall for firewall/filtering. 3 hours downtime in 6 months so far.

[kennysarmy]

RM Broadband here, with a Smoothwall for firewall/filtering. 3 hours downtime in 6 months so far.

 

Similar setup here and have had very few issues.

In fact I've been here since 1999 and can't remember many outages at all in 18 years! (Geez where did that time go!)

[TIOAOA]

Neither. Why are you limited to those two?

 

 

I'd ask this too, I've been shopping around and wouldn't say either of these would make my top 2.

 

Its a choice between exa and Wave9 @Wave9_Lee for me

[deano3693]

Hi,

 

RM are who the LEA are going with for their next contract and Schools Broadband interest me due to the offerings in terms of Lightspeed which we already use on site so are use to the look/feel and Fortigate looks like a good firewall solution.

[mats]

RM resold BT FTTC in one of my schools. Started off at about half the promised (but not enforcable) speed and over time went down further to a mere dribble of data. Cue support call, speed went up to more than the original install speed.

 

If you can get virgin fibre, it'll get you away from ancient copper issues.

[SchoolsBroadband]

+1 Schools Broadband of course

 

As standard in my opinion we offer a lot more than RM. For starters you can have your own virtualised firewall and have full control of all UTM functionalities without any capital expenditure costs. This also makes the solution a lot more scalable. e.g. if you took a 100/1Gbit now and in 2 years time wanted to upgrade to a 500/1Gbit then if you were to do full SSL decryption on most firewalls then you'd have to put the firewall in the bin and get a new one. Using hosted gives you scalability as we have much bigger firewalls and we upgrade so no capex costs for you.

 

There's lots of other features of course too. Free Lightspeed MDM for year 1, free SIP trunking on a longer term contract (coming very soon), free wireless controller, enhanced user based reporting as standard.

 

If you've any questions do send me a PM or post here and I'll reply.

 

Thanks for considering us.

 

Dave

[SchoolsBroadband]

Does the service have to be hosted?

 

We can do on-site Fortigates and Lightspeed or hosted fortigate and onsite Lightspeed but the costs are much more than going 100% cloud and it's also not as scalable.

 

Dave

[KevByrne]

Hi @deadno3693,

 

I work for a secondary academy and our 3 year contract with Schools Broadband went live last July, this is possibly the worst mistake I have ever made.

 

I was sold the service on the premise that we had our own hosted Lightspeed webfilter and own hosted Fortigate box (both of which are very good products) which would be completely independant to other schools and we could setup how we wanted.

 

Effectively we would have our own virtual boxes at a fraction of the cost it would be to purchase the products direct. Unfortunately these claims turned out to be false as although we can access our own tenant/area of these boxes, there are lots of settings that we cannot access and can't be setup how we would like as these would affect all of the other connected schools.

 

The system is in effect very limited and changes made for other schools without our knowledge will then suddenly stop things working or unblock sites that we have previously blocked.

 

After our leased line was installed Schools Broadband then tried to charge us over £3,600 to install our backup ADSL Line!!! This was sorted but only after a lot of very stern discussions with Dave.

 

When we first went "live" the box allowed complete and unrestricted access to pornography and we have had to spend months trying to get the boxes setup to a resonable level of security. We have had to manually block all search engines except Google as all other sites allowed inapropriate images and videos. Simply opening Yahoo images and typing the word "porn" resulted in pages of hardcore images.

 

We are currently having issues restricting youtube within school and for iPads out of school, I have been informed today that since Google moved to HTTPS the system has not been able to reliably restrict youtube. This is a another major and ongoing issue.

 

To be fair their support team are a nice bunch who do their best to fix our issues, however the problems we have are with the way the system is actually designed so there isnt always that much they can do. It is simply a case of constantly identifying and then rectifying problems which often then reoccur.

 

We are probably too far away from you to visit as we are based in Wednesbury West Midlands, however if you did want to pop in and see the system in action and the issues we have faced then please feel free to message me and we can arrange something.

 

Thanks

Kev Byrne

Edited March 9, 2017 by KevByrne
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[Joanne]

With my experience of lightspeed and colleagues experience of RM one thing to consider...

 

Reporting is much more comprehensive with Lightspeed than it is with Safetynet.

[deano3693]

With my experience of lightspeed and colleagues experience of RM one thing to consider...

 

Reporting is much more comprehensive with Lightspeed than it is with Safetynet.

 

I think i would keep my On Site Lightspeed if i went for the RM Solution.

[Joanne]

ahhh ok, no worries there then!

[SchoolsBroadband]

I think i would keep my On Site Lightspeed if i went for the RM Solution.

 

There's very little difference between an onsite Rocket and a hosted one. Most of the functionality is with the network configuration and RADIUS keys etc which we take care of. You get your own dedicated tier which gives you 99% of the functionality of the web filter compared to buying your own box.

 

I'd suggest you put your questions to our Solutions Architect on the exact differences so he can let you know what they are and if it'll effect you.

 

Most customers are fine being on a dedicated tier. It's very rare we ever sell an onsite box although you could keep this if you wanted and just use our hosted firewall.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[deano3693]

There's very little difference between an onsite Rocket and a hosted one. Most of the functionality is with the network configuration and RADIUS keys etc which we take care of. You get your own dedicated tier which gives you 99% of the functionality of the web filter compared to buying your own box.

 

I'd suggest you put your questions to our Solutions Architect on the exact differences so he can let you know what they are and if it'll effect you.

 

Most customers are fine being on a dedicated tier. It's very rare we ever sell an onsite box although you could keep this if you wanted and just use our hosted firewall.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

 

Thanks Dave - We've got someone from Schools Broadband coming out on Monday for a chat and a conversation about hosted/onsite Lightspeed will be one of the discussion topics.