Over 100 primary schools to receive 1Gbps broadband

Charlotte Whyatt • 27 Feb 2019

A new £3 million scheme aims to deliver on the government's promise to improve rural broadband. 

A new £3 million government pilot scheme will see over 100 rural primary schools across the UK receive access to gigabit broadband.

It forms part of the larger commitment they laid out in last year’s Future Telecoms Infrastructure review to upgrade the quality of the broadband infrastructure in the country’s more remote areas. 

Three schools have already been successfully connected up and seen their connection speed drastically improve from just 0.5Mb to a blazingly fast 1Gbps. 

Mary See, Headteacher at Cheselbourne Village school which was one of those three institutions, explained how it has “revolutionised the way we work.”

“The much faster and reliable access to the web has allowed staff to work more efficiently, while the children, although still geographically remote, are no longer technologically isolated and will have the same opportunities as their urban peers in preparing for a more technological future.”

Levels of paper waste can also be reduced through staff using the cloud which in turn leads to the school’s servers being decommissioned so reducing hardware, maintenance and IT support costs.  

Another 52 schools are due to be connected up in the next few weeks, with a further 72 having expressed interest in joining the roll-out and entered into discussions with the government. 

Source: Public Technology