connectivity - dark fibre - 25 year commitment

[Bev]

We are currently on a Wireless connection through our council which works pretty well.

 

They are removing this option shortly and will be investing in a dark fibre solution across the council. If we want to obtain our connection from the council, we have to commit to a 25 year payment on a new fibre (just the fibre, we can change providers for the rest after 5 years)

 

I am a bit dubious about committing to anything for 25 years. If I look back to 1998, I couldn't have predicted what technology we would be happy with now, so I am loathe to commit to 25 years going forward.

Going it alone, means sourcing ir ourselves (Virgin and BT are on our street but I don't know if there offerings are suitable for a school), but also taking on the support / filtering and firewall.

 

Has anyone else committed to 25 years? it was presented as a logical option but it seems like madness to me!

[Norphy]

I can't comment much about the 25 year commitment (other than to agree that it does seem like an absurdly long commitment to me), but I can say that the MAT I worked for before I left education had both internet circuits and L2 Point to Point connections from both Virgin and OpenReach, managed by a third party (Charterhouse Voice and Data). They handled the support for the circuits, rather than us. When the lines were put in, the respective companies ran new fibre from their cabinets to the premises, they didn't use existing fibre. We managed the filtering and firewall ourselves, as you say, but the circuits themselves were perfectly adequate for our use and fairly reasonably priced.

 

I suppose you have to do a cost analysis and see what works out the more reasonable option, either the bundled service from your local council or the separate bits and bobs and see what you think. Obviously there's no way you can do a 25 year analysis but five years is doable.

[psydii]

25 years is a reasonable time frame for big infrastructure. Not seen it before on internet lines in schools (though I suspect some of the old RBCs may have been built similarly - but schools shielded from the gory details).

 

Are many of the school being made this offer way, way off grid? This would be a way of levelling up access to be comparable with the metropolitan area networks build out over the last two decades.

 

Curious though, are they really doing this in house, or are they backing off to anyone with experience of building out this sort of thing?

 

I wonder if you might be able to call LGfl/ NGfL for advice in the background to get broad numbers on costs. Though given their current drive, there's a good chance they are the initial service provider.

[Bev]

We are a not a rural local authority at all. They are putting it out to tender, and it will be for the council as well as all the schools.

A number of schools, including us, currently have a Wifi link, which is around years old. Ours has been fine, but I know a lot of schools find it's very unstable, so they are trying to replace them all and have a more robust infrastructure.

[paulkerton]

I would put this out to OpenReach, Virgin et al. They usually have progammes like the Fibre Community Partnership or Rural Gigabit Connectivity programmes. You can usually get a fibre connection ran from a local exchange for quite sensible money that wouldn't require a 25 year commitment.

In 25 years I would expect 6G and 7G networks and to be at such a point that all devices we provide students and staff will run with an eSIM, so you won't need fibre connections or wi-fi. Committing for that long seems rash.

[dmj]

I would not commit to that. My reasoning is that Nielsens Law of internet bandwith suggests a 50% rise per year in bandwidth.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/

What you would need to do is calculate your current bandwidth using the compound interest calculation method (it's GCSE maths) over 25 years.

 

Suppose your current bandwidth is 500Mb/s over 5 years at 50% increase per year that's over 5GB's - but over 25 yes it's 100,000GB/s so unless their dark fibre has that capacity it's not future proofed enough for the term of the contract.

[SchoolsBroadband]

With the fact that BT Openreach are rolling out FTTP like there's no tomorrow and there's also plenty of other altnets installing all over the UK I wouldn't recommend signing your school up to a 25 year deal. Ok maybe it could be great for you in the short term but when FTTP is available from another provider you could end up paying a lot more for the rest of the term even if you can switch ISP after 5 years.

 

I'll send you a PM and will offer to see what other options you have available to you and which altnets and when BT Openreach have committed to roll-out FTTP (if they have at all).

 

Dave