How much does your RBC charge for internet connectivity?

[Dos_Box]

I'm just doing a bit of research for an article I hope to put up on the site about RBC's, and seeing that this year, for the first time, schools (in some areas) have to pay their RBC for connectivity.

What I need to know is some information please.

 

1. Do you have to pay your RBC for connectivity this year?
   
2. What RBC are you with?
   
3. How much are they asking?
   
4. What speed will you get for that?
   
5. Are you considering leaving or staying with your RBC in the future because of its pricing?
   
6. Have you already left your RBC and for what reasons?
   

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I want to get this article spot on.

[featured_spectre]

1. Yes...begrudgingly, as they sent put the paperwork to say prices were going up on April 1st, and we got it march 28th...not impressed.

2. Central beds covered e2bn connection

3. Last year £4500...this year £8700

4. Allegedly 10mb dedicated ring, but we are lucky if we scrape 2mb using various speed checks.

5. We will be leaving, already in talks with various companies to get us and our feeder schools on the same connection (100mb, with us taking 50mb and the feeders taking 10mb each)

6. No not yet

[featured_spectre]

Oh an addition to question 1...we were told in the paperwork if we didnt sign up our connection would be cut off

[pete]

1. Do you have to pay your RBC for connectivity this year? No (well, not visibly at least)
   
2. What RBC are you with? EMBC via LSN aka Netlinc
   
3. How much are they asking? n/a
   
4. What speed will you get for that? 40
   
5. Are you considering leaving or staying with your RBC in the future because of its pricing?No
   
6. Have you already left your RBC and for what reasons?Nope
   

 

Bear in mind that in the past we have had to pay some years, but not every year.

[Sylv3r]

Do you have to pay your RBC for connectivity this year? Yes, as we have always done as the Harnessing Technology was always passed onto the school

What RBC are you with? Durham IT Serices AKA Durham .net

How much are they asking? £15,500

What speed will you get for that? 10mbit on a good day - 6mbit generally

Are you considering leaving or staying with your RBC in the future because of its pricing? Looking at our options, we don't mind paying more if we receive more bandwith, good service etc

Have you already left your RBC and for what reasons? n/a

[steve]

1. Do you have to pay your RBC for connectivity this year? 2010-11 was £4000pa for 10mbps, 2011-14 is £11200 for 100mbps
   
2. What RBC are you with? YHGfL
   
3. How much are they asking? £11200pa
   
4. What speed will you get for that? 100mbps to LA (contended from LA to grid - 1Gbps from LA to Grid)
   
5. Are you considering leaving or staying with your RBC in the future because of its pricing? Will be reviewed at end of current 3 year contract (ends 2014)
   
6. Have you already left your RBC and for what reasons? No
   

[Soulfish]

1. Do you have to pay your RBC for connectivity this year? Yes. We're a new academy and we're being ported straight onto the new Virgin LGfL network
   
2. What RBC are you with? LGfL - London Grid for learning
   
3. How much are they asking? It's about £8,000 this year (I don't have the figures to hand right now), but price is based on pupil numbers as well as bandwidth. Because we're starting small we get it quite cheap
   
4. What speed will you get for that? 100mbit (possibility to increase higher for limited extra cost)
   
5. Are you considering leaving or staying with your RBC in the future because of its pricing? Staying - currently cheapest option for us as a brand new academy that is yet to open
   
6. Have you already left your RBC and for what reasons? Nope not yet
   

[User3204]

Do you have to pay your RBC for connectivity this year?

 

Yes, and we have always had to, as it was matched to the HT money which was passed to us...

What RBC are you with?

 

Oh, wait, dunno, through Wirral, not sure if they link to the North West RBC thing, never seen any evidence of this.

How much are they asking?

 

Last year was £7131 for 10mb, but due to budget slashings they dropped this to £6500.

They are upgrading to 100mb for an extra £2400 (ish, I don't have the figures on me).

What speed will you get for that?

 

See above. But they only guarantee the link to their Core, NOT the internet.

Are you considering leaving or staying with your RBC in the future because of its pricing?

 

I looked about, but no-one comes close to these prices, as the LA are paying for all the install costs.

The only way to do it is via an EFM over copper for about £3k, but this gives a best level of 10mb, I understand it would give the same speed as ADSL which gives us about 6mb.

Have you already left your RBC and for what reasons?

 

The LA have promised better service levels....

Edited April 18, 2011 by User3204

[glennda]

1. Do you have to pay your RBC for connectivity this year? Yes
   
2. What RBC are you with? West Sussex Grid
   
3. How much are they asking? £11200
   
4. What speed will you get for that? Apparently 10mb
   
5. Are you considering leaving or staying with your RBC in the future because of its pricing? No - not because of pricing anyway just that there is no chance of improvement to the line for at least 3 years and we max it out atm
   
6. Have you already left your RBC and for what reasons? N/A
   

 

The £11200 covers the 10mb line, filtering (done by atomwide) domain hosting for .sch address (our .org address is extra) email filtering (although we are not happy as we've had high profile cases of email's being blocked into the school and not informed of any blocks! Parent's had emailed 1 Head of house, 4 assistant heads, 2 deputys and the head with no response - first time school knew about it was when the chair of govenors rang head asking why he had a stroppy email from parent!)

 

Also they host our moodle (although bringing this in house from summer for SSO)

[Kitkatninja]

1. Do you have to pay your RBC for connectivity this year? No (well, funds were pre-allocated for the connectivity and not given to us, so Yes in a way)

2. What RBC are you with? EMBC

3. How much are they asking? If we had to pay for it, it would have been approx £18k (down from the initial price of £20k-odd, I believe)

4. What speed will you get for that? 40mb

5. Are you considering leaving or staying with your RBC in the future because of its pricing? Unsure, there's a lot to consider.

6. Have you already left your RBC and for what reasons? N/A

 

-Ken

[localzuk]

Do you have to pay your RBC for connectivity this year? - We pay our local authority, not the RBC, as Somerset has its own WAN.

What RBC are you with? SWGfL

How much are they asking? We pay around £4.5k, with the rest top sliced via the HT grant.

What speed will you get for that? Until last week, 10Mbit, from last week 100Mbit (not true speeds though)

Are you considering leaving or staying with your RBC in the future because of its pricing? Not because of pricing, as we don't know the full price!

Have you already left your RBC and for what reasons? Not yet

 

We intend to leave our LEA provided connection for the following reasons:

 

1. Their ability to get us information when requested is nearly non-existent. Its been quite a few months and they've yet to provide me with the costs for connectivity, post academy changeover.

2. We're 99% sure we're becoming an academy.

3. We aren't getting a true 100Mbit connection. Even during the quiet holiday time, we only get 75Mbit down and 15Mbit up. The entire LEA shares a single connection to the RBC.

4. There isn't an SLA that I know of.

5. We want greater flexibility with our connection regarding port openings, VPNs, filtering etc...