Are you worried that your school or college broadband connection isn’t up to scratch? Are you looking to the future and wondering whether your connection will handle fast-developing technologies, such as virtual reality or the Internet of Things? If so, don’t worry – this post will make choosing the right broadband for your school or college a lot simpler.What you need from your broadband connection.

When many staff and students need to access the internet at the same time, it places huge demands on your broadband connection. It needs to offer enough bandwidth to provide a fast connection for all users, no matter how high the demand.

In short, the faster your connection and the greater its bandwidth, the better.

These days, the preferred broadband option for all schools and colleges is a fibre connection. This is sometimes known as a ‘leased line’ or ‘fibre to the premises’. What makes this type of broadband so good is the fact that you have a fibre optic cable that connects you directly to your network provider. This connection can be dedicated to your school or college, making speed and reliability even more consistent.

Is our current broadband fit for purpose?

Before changing broadband providers, it’s a good idea to conduct an audit of your current connection. The Department of Education provides a helpful guide called Broadband for Schools.

According to this guide, the three hallmarks of a good broadband connection for schools are:

1. Being fast, even at busy times.
2. Being reliable, so users have confidence in the system
3. Protecting your community from external threats and unsuitable material by providing a secure online environment that doesn’t restrict normal use.

The guide also provides a six-stage checklist for auditing your current system. This is where a specialist IT provider like ECOM Education can give you invaluable help. Our expert team can help you analyse the following:

1. Contracts. We’ll look at the terms of your contract, when it expires, and suggest alternatives that could boost broadband performance or save you money.
2. Stability. We can analyse your IT system logs to find out how often your service has been disrupted, and whether the level of outage is acceptable.
3. Usage. This is particularly important. We’ll look to see how much bandwidth you use and whether your current connection is struggling – or is about to struggle – with the number of users you have.
4. Performance. We’ll test to see how quickly your connection performs when it is placed under heavy demand.
5. Security. This is when we check to see how secure your systems are, how well your users are protected and whether your filtering system is causing problems for legitimate uses.
6. Curriculum. We’ll work with you to determine what level of service will be required by your future curriculum plans. For example, many schools have discovered that virtual learning has placed significant new demands on their broadband system.

Why work with ECOM Education?

There are significant benefits to both schools and colleges when they work with ECOM Education to choose the right broadband connection.

Because we have significant experience in the education and commercial IT sectors, we offer expert and independent advice on how to achieve your IT goals. We can recommend broadband providers that many schools and colleges may be unaware of – and which may be able to provide a better service at a lower price.

Above all, we work with you look ahead and identify new learning technologies that may have an impact on the quality of broadband you require. There’s nothing more frustrating than upgrading a major broadband system, only to discover that you need to do it again a year or two later!

So, if you’d like help choosing the right broadband for your school or college, give us a call. Our friendly team are looking forward to helping you.