School Broadband Provision

[Iain.Faulkner]

Morning all,

 

We've just been informed that our school broadband costs (as provided by our local council) are to increase by 50%! Apparently (according to our business manager) the council have said that the increased cost is as a result of them having the harnessing technology's budget significantly cut.

 

My question/query, although I assume that most schools will use their local council for their broadband provision, does anyone pay for their own?

 

If so, can I ask what sort of costs and pitfalls are associated with "going on your own" so to speak? looking at the price the council are expecting us to pay I can't believe it's not cheaper to move away from them.

 

I appreciate that we use the council for filtering, but even with the added cost of bringing in something like smoothwall (other filtering firms are available :-) ) I believe it will work out cheaper.

 

Any information anyone can provide will be gratefully received as always.

 

Iain

[featured_spectre]

If you went away from LEA, you are looking at a hefty cost to have your own dedicated ring!

 

Add on top Smoothy filtering aswell

 

You are looking at a ~£10k a year!

[CyberNerd]

If you went away from LEA, you are looking at a hefty cost to have your own dedicated ring!

 

Add on top Smoothy filtering aswell

 

You are looking at a ~£10k a year!

 

Actually, our costs for a 10MB/s (contended with other schools) link through the LEA are currently (pre-HT increases) £7500 p/a.

An independent 10MB/s leased line on a 100MB/s circuit (uncontended) would cost only £1000 more, and a 100MB/s would be £21k

[Iain.Faulkner]

Thanks for the replies so far.

 

The costs you've both suggested are significantly cheaper than what our business manager is quoting from the council.

[CyberNerd]

Thanks for the replies so far.

 

The costs you've both suggested are significantly cheaper than what our business manager is quoting from the council.

 

It may be down to your location. call BT on 0870 429 3955 for a free availability check.

 

As for the pitfalls, the biggest issue would be transferring data to your LA. Assuming govt doesn't scrap some of this bureaucracy in the foreseeable future (they may) - I would suggest getting a 'backup' ADSL line to the LA or see whether they will allow a VPN.

[Edu-IT]

Thanks for the replies so far.

 

The costs you've both suggested are significantly cheaper than what our business manager is quoting from the council.

Also a bit less than the ballpark figures I've seen.

 

As for the pitfalls, the biggest issue would be transferring data to your LA. Assuming govt doesn't scrap some of this bureaucracy in the foreseeable future (they may) - I would suggest getting a 'backup' ADSL line to the LA or see whether they will allow a VPN.

What do you mean? Surely the programs the LA use to transfer data will work across any net connection as long as ports are open etc.

[CyberNerd]

What do you mean? Surely the programs the LA use to transfer data will work across any net connection as long as ports are open etc.

 

Not always, ours are all setup on an internal 10.0.0.0 network. They won't allow access from the internet.

It would be doable with a backup connection into their network (hence downgrade to an ADSL or ISDN service) or persuade them to allow VPN.

[Edu-IT]

Not always, ours are all setup on an internal 10.0.0.0 network. They won't allow access from the internet.

It would be doable with a backup connection into their network (hence downgrade to an ADSL or ISDN service) or persuade them to allow VPN.

Ah I see what you mean.

[zag]

Yeh we are looking at this as well.

 

Currently we pay the council 7.5k for 10mbit and a filtering solution cache-pilot which is really bad. I also expect the prices will rise now the grants are not given by the government.

 

I will certainly be considering an independent solution and 100mbit.

[PiqueABoo]

The costs you've both suggested are significantly cheaper than what our business manager is quoting from the council.

 

It's always about more than the price of a line. Key points:

 

1) What services are included in the RBC/LA price? [You really need to uncover them all]

 

2) What do the services you need cost independently?

 

Tread very carefully on the second one, few RBC/LA services are likely to be there "just-because" and don't forget to include the time/skillset/whatever required to maintain any new bits you might need locally.

[Iain.Faulkner]

It's always about more than the price of a line. Key points:

 

1) What services are included in the RBC/LA price? [You really need to uncover them all]

 

2) What do the services you need cost independently?

 

Tread very carefully on the second one, few RBC/LA services are likely to be there "just-because" and don't forget to include the time/skillset/whatever required to maintain any new bits you might need locally.

 

Good points, I'll be constructing an email to the council to ask about this shortly.

 

You are correct in that it's not just about cost and that you have to take everything else into consideration. But the prices being mentioned so far, some are a third of the price our council is asking for!

[PiqueABoo]

I suspect some of the prices you can get inside the M25 would make a few edugeeks cry. It's what you can get locally that counts... perhaps that will be cheaper (than the line element of the LA/RBC) perhaps it won't, only real quotes will tell.

[mrbios]

We're in the process of doing the same thing, currently it's costing us just over £9000pa for our connection + filtering from the LEA, the connection isn't that quick and has no failover in the event of the line going down

 

We had a guy in to take a look around and offer us a product on line only and we're getting a quote for a variable speed line, we can request a faster connection at specific times/months of the year (say specific exams or something) and they'll charge us depending on the speed we request, as well as failover in the event of one line going down, we're looking at the 30-50mbps area here with the ability to up it to 75mb if needed, we told him the costs of our current solution and he's now gone away to work out prices so hopefully we will have an answer on that soon - live monitoring and reports were another feature of his intended deal

 

On top of that im looking at the bloxx web and media filter products which work out around £4600 a year for the first 3 years and £3000 a year for the following 3 years, it would be a MAJOR benefit to have all the filtering in house ratehr than having to faff about with week long change requests to swgfl

[Disease]

We are going through the same process at the moment, we are being charged £19 per pupil on roll for our Broadband and all the schools are looking to see if we can get a better service ourselves.

 

BT will give us 100mb on 100mb bearer uncontended direct to internet for a tad over 20k a year.

[Edu-IT]

We are going through the same process at the moment, we are being charged £19 per pupil on roll for our Broadband and all the schools are looking to see if we can get a better service ourselves.

 

BT will give us 100mb on 100mb bearer uncontended direct to internet for a tad over 20k a year.

Then you have filtering on top of that? ~5k?

[Disease]

Yes, we may have to pay slightly more, but we will get a faster service and more control. At the moment we get 100mb from us to the LA the same as every other school, then we are all contended on their 30mb bearer outto the internet, which often results in poor DL speeds. We can also then control what is filtered and what is not.

[CyberNerd]

Then you have filtering on top of that? ~5k?

 

Thats pretty much what we were quoted, but we already have smoothwall (at a lot less than £5k).

We bought the smoothwall because the LEA provided solution (RM) isn't very good.

[Sylv3r]

Costs us around £17.5k per year via our LA for 10mbit with no filtering - this I do via our smoothwall box which is an additional cost.

[Stuart_C]

We pay Just over £10K (inc VAT) for 10Mb on a 10Mb bearer, leased line with no contention. plus a bit extra form some smoothie filtering.

[stevef1]

Hi, I’m looking into something along these lines, we have our 10Mbit connection via the LA it cost us around 11.5K per year about 6K goes to NGFL.

We get cache pilot thrown in,wow, the connection is not the best and the service is pretty abysmal, we don’t have control and as a paying customer i feel let down.

I’ve looked at BT for a 10Mbit line on a 100Mbit bearer is around 12K 20Mbit 14,5K per year not a great deal more that were paying, sounds tempting i must admit, we don’t use cache pilot i replaced it with smoothwall, much better product in all areas.

The only concern for moving away from the LA as a provider is what is the legal standing in terms of protection, obviously we would provide firewall/filtering on the line, is this enough? our LA bang on about government connect and security etc what have other people experienced when, if, they have moved away or are thinking of moving?

 

 

thanks

 

stevef1

[penfold_99]

The biggest thing to remember is the 60 business days lead time it will take to install a new leased line. We have heard from a few schools and academies about wanting to move away from the LA provided internet. You need to have filtering and fire walling in place.

[Haptic]

If people are looking for alternative options to LA broadband, get in touch- our sister company can offer several solutions which could well be of interest. All we would need to know to provide an indicative quote would be your postcode, required speed and whether you seek a uncontended line or not- drop me a PM and I’ll get some figures back to you.

 

Thanks,

 

Mark

[Edu-IT]

Just so I can get my facts right, is it next year (as in April) that we need to have this sorted by? Or the following year?

[john]

April 2011 is when most people are needing it for as that is when new financial year starts and most of these contracts run in financial years.