This follows a Council initiative to offer all maintained and academy schools in the region a cost-effective solution for replacing their existing copper and hybrid fibre internet connections with ultrafast full fibre. It also included the addition of centrally managed security using firewalls, web filtering and antivirus software.
MLL Telecom completed the schools’ migration to full fibre in nine months as part of a contract to overhaul the entire EastNet public services network (PSN) to support full fibre wide area network (WAN) services. In total, this involved MLL upgrading over 550 sites across Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes including schools, council offices and public libraries.
Dave Ager, operations manager for the ICT service at Cambridgeshire County Council, said, “MLL Telecom’s managed full fibre WAN solution, including 24/7 network monitoring, ensures we can provide teachers and students with fast, reliable and secure access to the latest education support services. This includes secure high-speed access to cloud services such as Office 365 and Google for Education benefitting those schools who have successfully obtained funding from the Department for Education for a new digital education platform.
“In these challenging times, such cloud-based remote learning solutions are increasingly necessary, allowing teachers to assign and assess work, provide feedback, communicate with staff, students and parents in real time while also facilitating collaboration between groups of pupils and teachers.”
With the help of MLL’s managed network support, the Council’s ICT Service is also offering its new EastNet full fibre WAN on a nationwide basis, allowing the connection of individual schools in the county to affiliates located anywhere in the UK.
Jeremy Wastie, head of public sector sales at MLL Telecom, added, “MLL Telecom is delighted to be supporting Cambridgeshire County Council in enabling schools and academies to seize the full fibre opportunity and securely maximise the potential of the very latest digital teaching and learning resources. At the same time, the Council’s initiative in sharing access to its full fibre network with schools based outside of the county clearly demonstrates the flexibility and added value of our highly scalable fully managed WAN solution.”
Serving over 15,000 public sector employees EastNet is one of the UK’s largest regional PSNs, operated by Cambridgeshire County Council, Northamptonshire County Council and Milton Keynes Council. In addition to district, city and county council offices, the growing number of sites connected across the region via EastNet include schools, NHS foundation trusts, public libraries, and village halls.