Schools with less than Superfast (25MB download speeds). DfE DCMS pilot.

[sigma]

DfE and DCMS estimate that only 1200 schools in the UK are below Superfast speeds (25MB download) and are running a pilot to connect 100 schools with 1GB "so that the results can help build the business case for the other 1100".

 

 

I would estimate that there are more than 1200 schools with below Superfast speeds given that in my small rural patch less than 50% could have that even if they wanted to because the infrastructure isn't there. Even the mobile phone coverage is patchy and not existent in some schools.

 

Small rural schools don't have the funds for "clever expensive" solutions.

 

Thoughts/comments?

[MartinT]

Being an independent school I cannot afford 1Gbps. I'm paying just over £800/mo for 300Mbps.

[LytchettNM]

Give VoIP unlimited https://www.voip-unlimited.net/ a call they quoted us around £500 for 300Mbps just waiting for our current contract to end.

[Achandler]

Is it just me who finds the terminology used to describe broadband awful.

 

Your have broadband, fast broadband, superfast broadband, ultrafast broadband.

 

4 names for a range of speeds from less then 1MB to upto 80MB. Probably all called "slow" in South Korea and a fair bit of Europe as well.

[Jamman960]

I hope they include Independent schools in this since they(the Government) excluded them from the Gigabit voucher scheme because "State schools cannot benefit from it" - we recently started the ordering process intending to use gigabit vouchers only to be told we weren't eligible because we were a school.

 

James

[SchoolsBroadband]

Being an independent school I cannot afford 1Gbps. I'm paying just over £800/mo for 300Mbps.

 

 

We can do 1 full 1Gbit leased line for that price to many locations in the country. PM me if you'd like a quick quote.

 

Dave

[mukz]

Being an independent school I cannot afford 1Gbps. I'm paying just over £800/mo for 300Mbps.

 

Is that a managed service with filtering and other bolt ons?

May i ask who it is? Can PM me if it is better

[markwilfan]

We can do 1 full 1Gbit leased line for that price to many locations in the country. PM me if you'd like a quick quote.

 

Dave

1Gb leased line for less than 10k PA. Really! Can I PM you for a quote? Edited August 25, 2018 by markwilfan

[SchoolsBroadband]

Sure.

 

It's Schoolsbroadband I.e us 😁

 

Send me a pm and I'll do you a quote. 1gbit / 1gbit is now getting to be the norm.

 

 

Is that a managed service with filtering and other bolt ons?

May i ask who it is? Can PM me if it is better

[mukz]

Sure.

 

It's Schoolsbroadband I.e us [emoji16]

 

Send me a pm and I'll do you a quote. 1gbit / 1gbit is now getting to be the norm.

 

We are with lgfl but thats another topic in itself.

I was just amazed at the price the other chap said.

[AlanD]

In my experience - its really not necessary to go for a symmetric leased line. We have a 300Mb/s business broadband line from Virgin (£80 a month). Tests regularly show actually speeds well in excess of this - sometimes 350Mb/s - but upload is more limited at around 15 to 20Mb/s - which in practice seems fine for us - and does VoIP and Office365 just fine. We have also been toying with the idea of replacing our FTTC (backup - and goes into load balancer with Virginline) with FTTP on demand - which despite its high install cost would start paying for itself after 3 years or so. There were days, when broadband was 2Mb/s that leased line was the only reasonble way to go, often in the early days to get 10Mb/s. But today....ordinary business broadband delivers the speed with little evidence of contention during the school day (...after 7 in the evening we do notice drops in speed...)

[EXA_Mark]

1Gb leased line for less than 10k PA. Really! Can I PM you for a quote?

 

You could also PM me for a quote too Exa's DarkLight service offers 1Gbps on a 10Gbps bearer for less than £6K a year, and our average 1Gbps on 1Gbps (where DarkLight isn't available is less than £8.5K a year), inlcludes support, and SurfProtect Quantum Filtering (if required)

[MartinT]

Is that a managed service with filtering and other bolt ons?

May i ask who it is? Can PM me if it is better

 

Managed service with very high uptime but no bolt-ons. We do all our own filtering. It's Exponential-e.

[MartinT]

We can do 1 full 1Gbit leased line for that price to many locations in the country. PM me if you'd like a quick quote.

 

Thanks - I will do but I have about 3 years to go on the contract.

[sigma]

Actually, I started the thread because I think that DfE and DCMS have underestimated the number of schools that really can't get a minimum of a 25MB download speed because the infrastructure just isn't there rather than for suppliers to have an excuse for a sales pitch. I was hoping that others might be able to substantiate my view or to inform me that I'm mistaken.

 

Either way, I think we are at the point where pupils in schools that do not have a 25MB minimum download speed are now being left behind. Rural discrimination maybe.

[SchoolsBroadband]

If funding is there to improve schools broadband connections then it's great news. Following your post ive been in touch with the dmcs and their specialist schools team so thank you very much for pointing this out. Hopefully something will come of fruition from this as I do agree that all schools (And consumers and businesses) should have access to ultra fast broadband.

 

We can help facilitate this of course and will do whatever we can. Sometimes dig costs are prohibitive which hopefully the dmcs or other government funding can help with.

 

We have done so.e innovative stuff via dark fibre, a

Wireless, sub loop unbundling to help schools and will continue to do so.

 

Yes there's always a cost to rolling out ultrafast and super fast broadband but we always try to minimise this to as little as we can so the schools benefit from it. For example we do not charge anything extra on top of a carriers excess construction charges if they apply to an order and try to be creative with how these are paid for where we can.

 

I do admire yours and the dmcs enthusiasm for trying to push this agend. Bravo.

 

Dave

[Achandler]

There are advantages and disadvantages to living everywhere and there are places in cities that can't get fibre broadband without leased lines still, so it isn't rural discrimination. When the people providing the service need to make money they do the palces that they make money first.

 

As a country we don't have full mobile coverage, not everyone is on main gas for example or mains water.

 

Don't get me wrong I do think that broadband is becoming a necessity for some things but at the same time, not everyone can have everything. I can barely get 3G, nevermind 4G and I live in a city suburb, and until recently I could only get upto 2MB broadband from BT et al.

[EXA_Mark]

Actually, I started the thread because I think that DfE and DCMS have underestimated the number of schools that really can't get a minimum of a 25MB download speed because the infrastructure just isn't there rather than for suppliers to have an excuse for a sales pitch. I was hoping that others might be able to substantiate my view or to inform me that I'm mistaken.

 

Either way, I think we are at the point where pupils in schools that do not have a 25MB minimum download speed are now being left behind. Rural discrimination maybe.

 

A very fair point, no sales pitch!

 

We've been working directly with DCMS specifically on this, and I was in a meeting personally with them less than a week ago. It's estimated there could be around 1500-2000 schools altogether that are in this situation of not being able to get more than 20Mbps, but the reality is, most of them cannot get a fraction of that speed, and you are right, a huge percentage of them are in rural areas. So your view is pretty accurate.

 

DCMS is working with the DfE to see what can be done, in connection with the LFFN (Local Full Fibre Network programme) whose main aim is to get Gigabit (plus) capable connectivity to as many businesses, schools and homes as possible, but ultimately is still a finite pot of money. Some of the solutions are working with local authorities to expand their network, and then national services providers such as Exa & City Fibre, in the West Sussex example https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/07/isp-exa-networks-to-supply-west-sussexs-gigabit-fttp-network.html to expand that network out even further, whilst a large part of this is still urban and semi-urban, there are rural areas within this example where we are looking to expand our network into too.

 

In an ideal world, there would be enough money to put in an relatively low cost open infrastructure that all service providers could use to pull their fibre through (I am aware of Openreaches PIA options) that reached every location in the UK, but we are decades away from that, even with investment. So we have to do our bit, slowly but surely, as will other providers like Hyperoptic, Gigaclear, ITS, Virgin and Openreach, but the economics of deploying fibre without subsidy or grants to very rural locations who do not have enough premises to offer a return on that investment means areas will miss out in the short and medium term.

 

However, after now saying that, the DCMS side of things is to help us, and other providers get out further and further from the core network infrastructure. The school's side, as you noted, is a pilot, but pilots often go beyond the pilot scope, and hopefully, this one will too. I know the initial 100 targets, is just that, an INITIAL target. If you couple this pilot, with the DCMS Gigabit Voucher scheme (Up to £3,000 for business to get gigabit capable fibre installed) then all of a sudden there is a bit more money to help with extended digs and getting fibre further out into the rural community. On the pilot scheme we are already looking at more than 50 schools for consideration on this.

 

It will require more than this though; it requires joined-up working and thinking, from ISPs, Central & Local Government & Communities to get this moving quicker. If you look at it from our example, NOT A SALES PITCH, Exa only offers services to Education and Businesses, we do not provide services to residential. So if we are looking to go to an area where there are only a handful of connections for us from the business and education side, then we have to look to who else we can work with who would be interested in sharing the construction costs to provide to the residential community. Partnerships we have such as CityFibre and Vodafone work perfectly in that example. Things are moving forward on this, much more so than at any point up to now, but it will take time.

 

As someone who lives in a rural area without any FTTP type services, I cannot say I feel it is rural discrimination, just a case of economics. I obviously say this with more insider knowledge than a lot of people, and yes it is frustrating sometimes.

 

It is important that (in this example) schools speak to their ISPs and see what they can do to help, or speak to specialist in this field, like Exa. Okay one sales pitch, but I wrote a lot first! Seriously though if anyone wants more information on the DCMS side, fibre expansions or anything really on this type of topic, feel free to speak to me via the forum, PM or ring me on 0345 1451234, and there will be no sales pitch whichever way you contact me, just happy to share the knowledge we have.

[Blue_Cookeh]

Is this something that's actively being pushed forward nowadays? We got FTTC through our school's village a year or two ago but we're so far from the Exchange/cabinet we're still only getting around 20Mbps down from both our ISPs ( @SchoolsBroadband; and Eclipse Internet/KCOM) and it's just not enough to support a school anymore - particularly when we're talking about trolleys of laptops and all day/constant use of iPads. We're pushing more out into the cloud and we have staff that are trying to work remotely more often - as a Primary school we're small but very tech-heavy. Edited September 5, 2018 by Blue_Cookeh

[EXA_Mark]

Is this something that's actively being pushed forward nowadays? We got FTTC through our school's village a year or two ago but we're so far from the Exchange/cabinet we're still only getting around 20Mbps down from both our ISPs ( @SchoolsBroadband; and Eclipse Internet/KCOM) and it's just not enough to support a school anymore - particularly when we're talking about trolleys of laptops and all day/constant use of iPads. We're pushing more out into the cloud and we have staff that are trying to work remotely more often - as a Primary school we're small but very tech-heavy.

 

Yes it is, very actively.

[sigma]

A very fair point, no sales pitch!

 

We've been working directly with DCMS specifically on this, and I was in a meeting personally with them less than a week ago. It's estimated there could be around 1500-2000 schools altogether that are in this situation of not being able to get more than 20Mbps, but the reality is, most of them cannot get a fraction of that speed, and you are right, a huge percentage of them are in rural areas. So your view is pretty accurate.

 

DCMS is working with the DfE to see what can be done, in connection with the LFFN (Local Full Fibre Network programme) whose main aim is to get Gigabit (plus) capable connectivity to as many businesses, schools and homes as possible, but ultimately is still a finite pot of money. Some of the solutions are working with local authorities to expand their network, and then national services providers such as Exa & City Fibre, in the West Sussex example https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/07/isp-exa-networks-to-supply-west-sussexs-gigabit-fttp-network.html to expand that network out even further, whilst a large part of this is still urban and semi-urban, there are rural areas within this example where we are looking to expand our network into too.

 

In an ideal world, there would be enough money to put in an relatively low cost open infrastructure that all service providers could use to pull their fibre through (I am aware of Openreaches PIA options) that reached every location in the UK, but we are decades away from that, even with investment. So we have to do our bit, slowly but surely, as will other providers like Hyperoptic, Gigaclear, ITS, Virgin and Openreach, but the economics of deploying fibre without subsidy or grants to very rural locations who do not have enough premises to offer a return on that investment means areas will miss out in the short and medium term.

 

 

 

There seems to be some "speed deflation". My original post quoted a speed of less than a 25MB download speed.

 

DfE and DCMS estimate that only 1200 schools in the UK are below Superfast speeds (25MB download) and are running a pilot to connect 100 schools with 1GB "so that the results can help build the business case for the other 1100".

 

My irritation (increasing by the day), is that my gut feel is that there are far more that 1200 schools nationally that get below 25MB download for whom a "business case" is not the issue but that that they cannot get that service because the infrastructure is not there or some fancy solution is seriously unrealistically expensive. Until there is some government investment, it will never be there because it is not commercially profitable as stated above. Meanwhile, DfE and DCMS are in effect "fiddling while Rome burns".

 

Some schools round here still get less than 5MB and I can't see anything in the future that's likley to change it.