Raid on IT budgets doubles to £100m

[beeswax]

From this week's TES - Raid on IT budgets doubles to £100m - News - TES Connect

[linuxgirlie]

hmmm I would be interested it what this means to those of us who get free broadband.

[oalcock]

Does your free broadband consist of unauthorised access to Wireless Networks?

[linuxgirlie]

Does your free broadband consist of unauthorised access to Wireless Networks?

 

Urmm you have confused me now?!? With segfl we get the first 10mb free (well top sliced using the budget mentioned above) and then anything above 10mb the cost goes incrementally. So we decided to stick with just having the "free" 10mb.....so that's why I was asking what will happen....I assume they will start charging for the "free" 10mb again, and if so when.....because if it is in April 2011, that can be budgeted for, but as the article stated that it would start mid-way through the year we could be stuck....saying that, that might decide in our area not to charge still and cut the losses else where.

[maniac]

Urmm you have confused me now?!? With segfl we get the first 10mb free (well top sliced using the budget mentioned above) and then anything above 10mb the cost goes incrementally. So we decided to stick with just having the "free" 10mb.....so that's why I was asking what will happen....I assume they will start charging for the "free" 10mb again, and if so when.....because if it is in April 2011, that can be budgeted for, but as the article stated that it would start mid-way through the year we could be stuck....saying that, that might decide in our area not to charge still and cut the losses else where.

 

Speaking to KCC a couple of weeks ago, they were already talking about the possibility of having to charge schools for the 'free' broadband link currently provided. If more money's been cut from that pot, which is the very one used to fund it, I'd say it was almost a definite now.

[linuxgirlie]

But do you think it will be from April? I mean finding about £6000 from September would be a pain.

[tmcd35]

Urmm you have confused me now?!? With segfl we get the first 10mb free (well top sliced using the budget mentioned above) and then anything above 10mb the cost goes incrementally. So we decided to stick with just having the "free" 10mb.....so that's why I was asking what will happen....I assume they will start charging for the "free" 10mb again, and if so when.....because if it is in April 2011, that can be budgeted for, but as the article stated that it would start mid-way through the year we could be stuck....saying that, that might decide in our area not to charge still and cut the losses else where.

 

We don't get any free broadband here, we pay around £27k-ish p.a. for our 100mb (capped at 20mb) connection. I've been recently looking at these guys - Sharedband - Faster Broadband Today - as I think I can come up with a fully working solution that'd cost us less than £20k in the first year and less than £10k (easy) p.a. there after.

 

If these budget cuts keep hitting us then things like this must be worth seriously looking at.

[torledo]

With segfl we get the first 10mb free (well top sliced using the budget mentioned above)

 

so not 'free' at all then.

[linuxgirlie]

Try explaining that though

[steve]

Well we get all the harnessing tech money devolved to us. But we get billed for our broadband link (YHGFL).

 

Only 6 months ago we signed up for a further 3 years (from 2011 to 2014) at an estimated £12K per year.

 

Now this money has just vanished, cuts are going to have to be made - those Blackberrys for leadership are the first on my list, followed by digital signage :-)

[PiqueABoo]

Only 6 months ago we signed up for a further 3 years (from 2011 to 2014) at an estimated £12K per year. Now this money has just vanished,

 

Could be wrong, but my impression was that people didn't expect the HT grants to continue next financial year, and that was the case way well before the Age of Austerity[tm] started i.e. you were probably always going to have to cope with that money "vanishing" from April 2011.

[maniac]

But do you think it will be from April? I mean finding about £6000 from September would be a pain.

 

I really don't know, I've only been informed that it's likely that at some point KCC will have to start charging schools for the basic connection. I'm pretty sure that they will need to give schools some notice of this, so I'd be surprised if it was from September, but from April could be a real possibility.

[GrumbleDook]

Could be wrong, but my impression was that people didn't expect the HT grants to continue next financial year, and that was the case way well before the Age of Austerity[tm] started i.e. you were probably always going to have to cope with that money "vanishing" from April 2011.

 

The impression was given, in a variety of places (all verbally of course) that the 'capital' grant would go, or be seriously slashed and a 'revenue' grant would cover the running costs as much as possible for next year ... then it became clear with the new Govt that this would not appear ... and then they do a mid-year cut of an existing grant.

 

We kept the grant and 'managed' it for schools ... so it wasn't free either ... but it is going to be painful for schools to have *any* cost put forward to them.