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Hello Edugeekers, I’m sure you’re all probably aware that in one way or another BT Openreach has something to do with the installation and service of the vast majority of full fibre leased lines throughout the country. I must admit I’m pleasantly surprised by BT Openreach’s announcement on Tuesday this week. Ofcom (The UK’s telecoms regulator) has ruled that BT Openreach held significant market power and therefore should be subject to tighter regulation of pricing. Although this was supposed to be on high speed fibre leased lines of 1Gbit and above, BT Openreach has also slashed costs of leased line connectivity of BT Ethernet Access Direct and BT Ethernet Access Direct Local Access circuits. Discounts on rentals of 25% on wholesale EAD LA circuits and 33% on point to point EAD circuits by BT Openreach on 100Mbit circuits will help drive the installation of faster Internet and point to point leased line circuits to schools and educational establishments throughout the UK. The average 100Mbit direct leased line connection when using BT fibre has now reduced by nearly £1,000pa compared to our old pricing. We’ve also passed on the £1,200pa saving on all point to point EAD leased line circuits immediately. Slashing the costs of 100Mbit circuits by BT will help drive faster speeds for primary and secondary schools throughout the country. Although the new pricing doesn’t come into effect until 1st May we are already offering the updated pricing on all quotations. Do let me or any of the other sponsors on this page know if you’d like a quote 

I've finally managed to convince SLT to ditch Entrust for our Leased Line and I'm looking into our options. I've had a quote from Wave9 for their managed Sophos XG and Leased Line and I'm very impressed with what I've seen so far. Has anyone had experience with them? If so what's the service like? Any input is greatly appreciated

Hello everyone, to start off with mods, I have this is ok posting here. Please do let me know if not and move to any relevant forum but it is Internet related. I'm interested in getting IT managers feedback on a potential leased line product we are considering selling via an LLU provider. I have my reservations but would love to get some honest opinions from you. Currently for leased lines we sell guaranteed 1:1 contention ratio, same speed upload / download, speed fixed 24x7x365 at fixed speeds. Normally for secondary schools this is either a 50Mbit or 100Mbit. Leased lines are not cheap, but you get what you pay for and we almost always recommend them for secondary schools. I have been approached by an LLU provider to offer the education market a new product. This will be £1,000 to £1,500pa cheaper than our normal product as above. As an example lets talk about a 100Mbit line From 08:00 - 17:00 you'd get the full 100Mbit with 1:1 contention ratio as per the normal product. Outside of these hours we then give 100Mbit of bandwidth to 10 schools, effectively giving a 10:1 contention ratio. The thing is though if you look at all the network stats, schools hardly ever use bandwidth outside of these hours. Sure there is the odd bit of offsite backup but not much. it's highly likely that schools will get nearer to the 100Mbit outside of the hours anyway due to low usage by other schools. I really do want to put it on the record though that we are only THINKING about providing this. We do NOT currently provide this and haven't to any schools using our service or currently signed up to do so in the near future. If we do go with the product we will also offer both different options and be completely up front about the differences in the product. Any thoughts on the matter would be much appreciated. Thanks guys!

Hello everyone, we're looking to trial a new GEA-FTTC product from one of our carrier partners and I'm looking for any schools interested in testing this for you and having the service at cost for 1 year as well as us paying the installation. You can have this with or without our content filtering / security service. So a little on the technology GEA (Generic Ethernet Access) FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) This is a new wholesale version of traditional FTTC (also known as BT Infinity). It works by using high speed fibre to the BT green street cabinet, then copper from the cabinet to your school. Unlike normal FTTC, GEA-FTTC uses BT's National Ethernet network and not the normal shared 21CN broadband network. Therefore a 1:1 contention ratio can be supplied giving leased line performance. Speed available still depends on how far away the school is from the street cabinet and this gets slower the further away you are. The specific product we are trialing guarantees a same speed upload / download of up to 20Mbit (depending on actual speed available on the line) but you can burst up to the maximum sync speed if spare capacity on the network is available. Therefore the offering is quite unique giving a minimum guaranteed speed but the availability to go faster as and when required. As part of the install we will send an engineer to site, install a fully managed Cisco router and we'll help integrate it into your existing network. We'll also let you know what speed to expect. Costs will be sub £2k for an Internet only variation which when compared to a 20Mbit full fibre leased line costing in the region of £5k - £6kpa is a bit of a bargain. No phone line needs to be installed as this is included in the installation charge we pay. Please note this service is only available where FTTC exists at your current exchange and street cabinet. I'm away on holiday until Monday 22nd April so it's best to get in touch via our website on Schools Broadband | Welcome . If you get in touch with me via PM I'll get in touch as soon as I'm back. if you've any questions for the general forum please post them here and I'll get one of my support chaps to answer as best we can. Thanks Dave

We have been granted 4 Ethernet internet leased lines each with its own link and IP Address. The supplier advised we need a router for each. Can anyone recommend a multi-WAN Router i can use?I have seen a Draytek but the features highlights it is suitable for Broadband.