schoolsbroadband.co.uk

[goldie-gold]

Hi all,

 

So. I bet we all really want another thread about EMBC / emPSN and whether to leave or stay!

 

This thread is specifically asking about Schools Broadband (the company - I would post a link but it wont let me - schoolsbroadband dot co dot uk)

 

Anyone in Leicestershire got any experience of them. The appear to be offering the moon on a stick in terms of connectivity, services and support at a VERY cheap price compared to the framework suppliers.

 

I feel like there must be a catch!

 

What do we think?

[elsiegee40]

I have no experience of them. They seem a very new setup and are clearly pitching hard for EMBC business.

 

There have been other threads on here about them recently.

[goldie-gold]

I have no experience of them. They seem a very new setup and are clearly pitching hard for EMBC business.

 

There have been other threads on here about them recently.

 

I did a search. I couldn't find a great deal. Hopefully someone in Leicestershire will chime in...

 

EDIT - forgot to say thanks for you input.

[synaesthesia]

They're not a new setup at all, they're aka Talk Straight and have been around a good deal of time. They are one of the people we are aiming towards most favourably as a combination of cost and feature, however they're not the cheapest for us (Northants) so may have to haggle a bit.

They have so far been professional and quick, and have offered us some nice incentives to get up and running quickly with minimal transfer difficulty. All of my primary schools have signed up with them and dealings with them so far have been good. They all have a disadvantage of a crap ADSL line, however SB have it in the contract that when Fibre to the Cabinet arrives in December, they will move them over FOC. They're not connected up just yet but that won't be long.

 

I have no complaints about them as yet, it's early days but I don't believe there's likely to be. I'll happily keep this thread up to date with how things go.

Edited April 20, 2012 by synaesthesia

[goldie-gold]

They're not a new setup at all, they're aka Talk Straight and have been around a good deal of time. They are one of the people we are aiming towards most favourably as a combination of cost and feature, however they're not the cheapest for us (Northants) so may have to haggle a bit.

They have so far been professional and quick, and have offered us some nice incentives to get up and running quickly with minimal transfer difficulty. All of my primary schools have signed up with them and dealings with them so far have been good. They all have a disadvantage of a crap ADSL line, however SB have it in the contract that when Fibre to the Cabinet arrives in December, they will move them over FOC. They're not connected up just yet but that won't be long.

 

I have no complaints about them as yet, it's early days but I don't believe there's likely to be. I'll happily keep this thread up to date with how things go.

 

Please do.

 

I went to a seminar that they gave. I came away in two minds.

 

On paper they seemed great. They offer essentially the same as the EMBC framework for a lot less money. Their FORTINET boxes seemed great. Their online backups were cheap (although not fully manager I don't think). Lots of other great stuff too. Don't get me wrong, I was impressed.

 

On the other hand I found myself feeling slightly uneasy. They made certain claims which were misleading IMO (as sales people always do) and even said one thing I am 99% sure is untrue. They commented on the LA in a way I found unnecessary - I really do not like sales people who feel the need to bash other products to sell their own. Also, there were additional costs for certain things I am interested in which were not clear until I started to dig a bit more.

 

Something that worried me, which I think was supposed to be a good thing, is they said they made a loss in the first year in order to win business - suppose they make a loss on 1000 new schools - I am not business expert but that sounds a risky plan to me. How are they going to recoup that loss and continue to provide services at the same low price year on year? Perhaps I am being ridiculous.

 

I suppose what I am really want is to speak to someone who has hands on, long term experience with them. I would like to hear from someone what my fears are unfounded.

[synaesthesia]

Did you get any of the quote paperwork through with the references provided? Will be worth asking them (think the references were Bedford based schools). If not let me know and I'll find the paperwork with references on for you.

 

As the school's side of it is a slightly different fork of their company, it'll be worth asking around about Talk Straight.

 

Don't worry too much about some of the made claims - if there's anything you're unsure of, ask here; there are certainly people that can verify or discredit them. We've had similar from other large suppliers too, one claimed to own the national ethernet network, and that claim alone meant they had no chance of getting near us!

[sjb]

My school has recently switched over to Schools Broadband. Before we made our decision we spoke to a couple of schools in Bedfordshire who have been using them for two or three years and the references they gave were very positive - no downtime, very good support, effective filtering, less hassle - neither referee had anything negative to say about the service they had experienced.

 

Our experience so far has been good. The installation went smoothly - the engineer was very knowledgeable and thorough and spent a whole day on site making sure everything was set up the way we wanted it. We have had a few issues due to our internal configuration, which the SB support staff helped us to resolve even though it was nothing to do with their installation. All services (B2B, AVCO etc) are working, including Leamis remote backups (Leamis have been great and spent a lot of time figuring things out for us). We are in a FTTC area, so speeds have increased significantly.

 

I have been particularly impressed with the filtering - we have a Fortinet firewall onsite and it blocks a lot of things that our old EMBC filtering didn't, including Google Images. We also have more control over filtering levels for staff and pupils, which is linked to Active Directory so the appropriate levels are set at login (previously we had to login to the EMBC portal separately to get staff level filtering). I can easily change settings for individual sites and the SB support staff can dial in remotely to make more complicated changes. The firewall reporting is also very good.

 

In response to goldie-gold's concern about making a loss in the first year - SB's initial contract term is three years, which is how they can make a loss in the first year as the equipment costs are spread over the contract period. But they do allow you to end the contract early if you choose to (in which case you pay the balance of the set up costs).

 

Happy to answer any particular questions anyone may have.

[Gibson335]

They were quick to respond and, yes, quick to make promises, but then they're business people first and foremost, so that was to be expected. They have an all-in price for services, some of which we didn't require, and so when set alongside one of the emPSN options they were no better financially. There will be slight cost differences sometimes even within the same county, but for us it just didn't stack up.

[synaesthesia]

OK, one of my primaries is now up and running with Schools Broadband and we're reasonably happy. Some small setup issues (i.e. filters) which just need tweaking to the school's requirements, and migration of email will be slow from EMBC's webmail over but that's not their problem. Performance is good, 3.5Mbit up from 1.5Mbit and the VPN system "just works".

More to come hopefully but at all point they've been professional and support has been good.

[themanfromict]

We had our SB installation done today. Good points are the filtering and the performance, 8.5Mbit up from 2Mbit. Still waiting on email (mentioned live@edu, blank face response) and VPN's, installation guy didn't know how to do it, but said he would arrange for them sort it out remotely...

 

Oh, and does anyone know if you can share Fortinet filters via VPN? They installed a second site for us, but it has no firewall!

 

Also did anyone else get any paperwork? Unless the admin team took it off him before I was called upon I don't even have a helpdesk number.

 

Overall good, but room to improve.

Edited May 14, 2012 by themanfromict

[sjb]

I didn't get any paperwork either on the day, but they emailed me a user guide when I asked. I set up live@edu myself (SB will do it but charge extra) - it's fairly straightforward to do. For VPN access you need to get users set up with permission to log in remotely. The support number is 01133 222333 - the support staff are good and usually respond quickly. You can also email [email protected].

[paulellam]

What kind of pricing did you get on the service?

[themanfromict]

Think the price for a primary was around £2900

[themanfromict]

Does anyone have a list of what was included in the 3 packages? I have a copy of the invoice which says we signed up for silver, but I can't for the life of me remember what that features!

[synaesthesia]

SERVICE OPTIONS

 

Gold Silver Bronze

Super fast internet connection up to 40Mbps Y Y Y

Ability for staff to block and unblock websites Y Y Y

8 Real world IP addresses as standard Y Y Y

Remote login to school network for staff, your Local Authority or you IT support technincians Y Y Y

Uncongested contention ratio Y Y Y

Unlimited POP email accounts Y Y Y

Spam filtering of e mail (SMTP feed or POP e mail) Y Y Y

Equipment warranty for duration of contract Y Y Y

Keep your .sch.uk school e mail address Y Y Y

Website hosting of your school website Y Y Y

Onsite engineer installation Y Y Optional Extra

Per IP address Web Filtering Policy Y Y

Web Filtering Interaction into Windows Active Directory Y Y x

Reporting of attempted access to blocked websites Y Y x

Advanced customisable reporting of attempted access to block websites and application usage Y X x

Inline Anti Virus scanning and free PC Anti Virus Software Y Y x

 

Sorry for dodgy formatting. Get the picture though - assuming you mean primary level, anyway.

Edited May 24, 2012 by synaesthesia

[Progress]

Hi,

 

We are moving four schools over to SchoolsBroadband at the moment in South Derbyshire - All is looking good so far - The only issues were with the BT guys as SB give you a new line. In one case a pole outside wasn't planted deep enough for another cable.... However, all sorted now.

Actually it's all happened pretty quickly and the SB contact is very helpful.

The hardware goes in easy enough - But be ready as there is no proxy afterwards, make sure you know who will need a tweak with their gear, but on the plus side, no more Home/School proxy scripts!

The filtering will definitely need tweaking, but looks good and efficient.We are going to move to Office 365 for email hosting (365 for Education setup is a pain at times but worth it), we set up some org.uk domains with one.com (£10.80 per year), just to get the ball rolling as you can add your .sch.uk when it gets transferred.

 

I would be interested in any advice from folks who have experience migrating from the EMBC OWA as I guess downloading to a local Outlook and creating a .pst is going to be a pain in the posterior.....

If anyone needs any advice about the Schools Broadband process - please let me know..

[sjb]

Actually migrating from OWA to Live@edu was surprisingly easy - just had to make a CSV file of the user email addresses and passwords and live@edu moved everything across automatically. Assume there is a similar process for Office 365.

[ttw]

It's actually very easy - all you need to do is add your new users using a.CSV file (Microsoft even supply a master for you!), allocate the licences, and then log in as each user (or explain to them what they have to do), and in the Outlook options there is a section "See all your emails in one place". Enter the account details using the .embc.uk.com alias - not the domain email address - and Office 365 will go and find the email account, and synchronise the two mail boxes. Not just the inbox - it also synchronises the sent items, drafts and so on. I'm working on a simple guide at the moment, for one of my schools to be able to do it themselves. You don't have to wait for the domain name to be transferred - the MXR will ensure that existing mail is sent to the EMBC box, but Office 365 will keep synchronising and showing the mail coming in. And if something is deleted from the old box, it doesn't appear to be removed from Office... It's made my life a lot easier!

 

Contacts are a different matter - I haven't found a way of automating that yet.

[synaesthesia]

*head bangs on desk* Just spent a fair few hours manually making PST files and copying across yesterday!

 

1 warning - mailbox limit is 100mb! Ask them to raise that as priority otherwise anyone with more than 4 emails might be upset.

Also make sure you pre-organise the moving of MX records from your previous provider so domains get moved over nice and quickly.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hi there,

 

your schools will have received an information from our support department regarding transferring the TAG of the domain from EMBC to us. This may have gone to your head / bursar and they may not have passed it on.

 

If you call our support department on 01133222333 option 2 they'll be happy to pass the instructions on. Don't worry it's a piece of cake to do and is normally completed within 48 hours after you've sent the email to EMBC requesting the TAG change.

 

Thanks

[synaesthesia]

I hasten to add the turnaround time at embc is up to 5 days as its not high priority so do get them sorted soon.

[alan-d]

Anyone in the Birmingham area converted to SchoolsBroadband?

 

How do you get around the required S2S connections?

[Edu-IT]

I hasten to add the turnaround time at embc is up to 5 days as its not high priority so do get them sorted soon.

Had mine changed in <24 hours.

[synaesthesia]

Perhaps you shouted louder than me

 

Positive note - I'm glad we're moving away from EMBC after this mornings fiasco. Ridiculous.

[Edu-IT]

Haha! Oh their latest email to me will result in some shouting for sure!

 

Who are you moving to? I assume you mean the slow connectivity?