Virgin Media to slash connectivity costs for London schools

Five-year deal expected to deliver £300m in public sector efficiencies

Schools in London are set to benefit from cheaper connectivity thanks to a new five-year framework contract signed by the London Grid for Learning and Virgin Media.

Under the deal, Virgin Media will invest £200m in its network to enable the delivery of voice, data and related ICT services to schools, local authorities, police stations and hospitals in the capital.

The first sites should be connected to the new network in April, with the rollout to be completed by June 2012.

Some 2,800 London schools will be connected to the network, and the deal will see primary schools pay less than half their current rate for 10Mbit/s connections, and secondary schools pay less than a third of the previous price on their 100Mbit/s connections. In total, schools should save around £100m over the course of the five-year contract.

Mark Ducker, head teacher at Gonville secondary school in Thornton Heath, explained the importance of connectivity to schools: "Fifty-nine per cent of secondary school teachers use an interactive whiteboard, and many more use videoconferencing, podcasts and other internet-based platforms such as the Managed Learning Environment to enhance their lessons – connectivity has become absolutely core to good teaching."

Overall the network is predicted to deliver £300m in efficiencies across the wider public sector, according to John Jackson, head of ICT at Camden council.

Mark Heraghty, managing director of Virgin Media Business, explained that the media company was able to deliver cost savings because of the extensive capacity of its network and the length of the deal signed: "Our optical fibre network was created with considerable capacity for residential use; during the day when people are at work it is hardly used. We therefore have a huge network and massive daytime capacity for schools and other public services. Similarly, the length of the deal has meant that we will be able to recoup investment that we make to deliver the services."

The network will comply with a Government Conveyance Network (GCN) baseline IL2 standard and is able to encrypt IL3. It will also use the Connecting for Health N3 standard when dealing with patient data for hospitals.