Schools Broadband Network

Gosh

I've recently been involved with 2 local (rural) schools - including the networking of one of those schools and can't believe the ineptitude of what's going on.

Contracts to provide broadband services have been awarded (since January 2005) - Eircom only got the contract to supply and install routers in the schools. All schools received a letter from the NCTE a month ago saying who their service provider would be and that it was 'hoped' some of the installations would happen over the summer holiday period. Having spoken to the NCTE help desk today about the situation I was told Eircom would not be ready to start supplying routers until July and until that time the service providers could not plan installation dates.

Quote from the NCTE website

Digiweb - 1,428 schools
Smart Telecom - 1,041 schools
Irish Broadband - 592 schools
ESAT BT - 585 schools
Last Mile Wireless- 215 schools
HS Data (Wireless provider) - 87 schools

Eircom will provide and install the routers in each school, which are part of the necessary broadband infrastructure; it will also provide wholesale support over its network for fixed line broadband proposals.

Connection of schools will be scheduled to begin after contracts have been concluded with the successful bidders and the roll-out programme will commence shortly thereafter. A priority of the programme is to have every school connected by the end of 2005.

So Eircom, despite not having won any contract to provide the broadband service to schools, are stuck in the middle and holding up the roll-out.

In the meantime schools are being encouraged to network classrooms and are
being provided with grants that, in the 2 schools I've been involved with, hardly meet the costs os networking the classrooms. The NCTE publishes indicative costs to schools - a classroom with 5 network points, for example, should cost around €1,440 - one of the schools I've been involved with has 19 classrooms between 3 buildings (which would required external wireless bridges) and their grant was less than €10,000. The other school has 13 classrooms and their grant was less than €7,000

Whilst each school must look at what it really wants (and can afford) the 2 I've been involved with have been told by their ICT Advisor that "Department" (of Education and Science) guidelines is that all classrooms should be networked with "about" 5 network points per room to ease "future-proofing".

Who are this government trying to kid? If they want this programme to be a success then they ought to start with giving Eircom a kick up the proverbial for holding up the start of the roll-out.

vinnyfitz

Contact Sean Flynn, education correspondent in the Irish Times or John Walsh (same in the Indo) and encourage them to write it up as a story.

They are both good and accessible journalists who are likely to be interested in something like this.

Paddy20

Yep, darn right. Another example of EirCoN punishing innocent children for having to face a bit of competition :mad:

P.

jwt

Gosh wrote:

In the meantime schools are being encouraged to network classrooms and are being provided with grants that, in the 2 schools I've been involved with, hardly meet the costs os networking the classrooms. The NCTE publishes indicative costs to schools - a classroom with 5 network points, for example, should cost around €1,440 - one of the schools I've been involved with has 19 classrooms between 3 buildings (which would required external wireless bridges) and their grant was less than €10,000. The other school has 13 classrooms and their grant was less than €7,000

Yep the grants are poor but aren't supposed to be a 100% subsidy. The school boards are supposed to raise extra funding to complete the IT rollout.

In most schools I've visited the cost of cabling the school alone would blow most of the grant.

Mind you the guidelines supplied for acceptable component prices i.e. NIC's switches etc leave a serious amount of leeway for profiteering by individuals.

I have seen one quote where the contractor was charging 110 euro per NIC talk about RipOff Ireland!


John

Gosh

jwt wrote:

Yep the grants are poor but aren't supposed to be a 100% subsidy. The school boards are supposed to raise extra funding to complete the IT rollout.

That might have been the intention of the DoE but I'd doubt if too many schools would go along with that ... saw another thread today about the rollout of broadband to TD's ... bet they won't be asked to contribute to the cost ... :eek:

Blaster99

I would say with a wireless network, you could "wire" a school for the type of money you're mentioning above.

Sponge Bob

KRG_Ac_Ire wrote:

..please not satellite ;(

over 50% , lots of small 2-3 room rural installs to be done .

thegills

So Eircom, despite not having won any contract to provide the broadband service to schools, are stuck in the middle and holding up the roll-out

Can the BB provider not deliver it's service as per normal on their own CPE regardless of eircom. They can return when the eircom router is in place.
thegills

Blaster99

Is there somebody with an overall responsibilty for keeping these broadband services up and running or is it up to each school? Satellite services don't appear to be particularly reliable and if you add lack of IT skills in schools and lots of contractors to the mix, I can't see how this will work in the real world.

Sponge Bob

The NCTE has a central helpdesk for all schools.

Solair

Sounds like eircom don't care if they're not providing the broadband the routers can wait!

Delphi91

Have a look here for more info on the broadband rollout

Schools Broadband

In the school where I teach, we're due to get upgraded over the summer. AFAIK Digiweb are our suppliers.

Mike

Gosh

Broadband providers are only providing the access links, the network will be centrally managed by HEAnet ... see the following link for a more detailed explanation ...

The Schools Broadband Programme

Solair

Read that report, sounds like a fantastic idea. It's a shame that the routers are being held up though. I assume we'll see it largely rolled out by 2005-2006 school year's start in September though ?

DonegalMan

Commiting all schools to have Broadband was a wonderful initiative.

Unfortunately, like so many government initiatives in Ireland, it is being implemented in a half-cocked manner.

jwt

Clonard National School in Meath has been slated to get Digiweb Sat BB. However in the meantime Lastmile have gone live with wireless BB in Kinnegad.

Now if I stand on the school roof I can SEE the wireless base station.

However because the whole precess is done through tender I cannot get the NCTE to change from Sat to wireless.

Also as a word of caution to anyone else dealing with schools for this, the anti spam, anti virus, content filtering and firewalls are from the school BB network to the internet.

There is minimal security from one school to another. So if I get onto a school PC I can hack away into another school with releative impunity

So, always recommend a decent firewall, anti spam and content filtering.

Given the budgets involved something like IPCOP with dans guardian filtering on an old PC between the LAN and WAN.


John

Gosh

jwt wrote:

So, always recommend a decent firewall, anti spam and content filtering.

Given the budgets involved something like IPCOP with dans guardian filtering on an old PC between the LAN and WAN.

Content filtering and anti-spam is being done by HEAnet centrally, they are offering NAV to schools at €4 a license.

Mr_Man

The Government will only bear the cost of the BB connection for (AFAIK) three years, after that it is up to the school to carry the cost. Given that so many of them are going to get a Sat install it will be interesting to see how many drop the BB setup for say wireless, or altogether once the period of subsidy has expired.

As for providing content to make the BB connection a viable tool for teaching the curriculum don't get me started.....

M.

eircomtribunal

Mr_Man wrote:

As for providing content to make the BB connection a viable tool for teaching the curriculum don't get me started.....

M.

I am a strong supporter of the idea that the Internet is a self-runner. That was the case with all successful Internet/Broadband developments in other countries, and if the Irish Joe Soap had not been priced out of exploring the Net, our Internet and Broadband take-up figures would now be in line with the group of small Northerly EU countries and not at the average of the new EU entrants.

As for schools this is not the case at all at all.

In this strictly structured environment, with an already overburdening curriculum content a very well thought-out program is needed to bring the benefits of Internet access to bear. I would be surprised if sufficient planning, developing and testing had been done with content-curriculum-integration. If teachers are left alone we will see very varied results, to put it mildly.
It sure should be an exciting challenge for interested pedagogues to develop this area.

But then, perhaps ex education minister Noel has planned in advance for this?
P.