Easynet to link Surrey schools in £10m deal

Easynet has won a £10m, four-year contract to provide broadband services to all of Surrey's 418 schools and 135,000 pupils.

The broadband provider will be running a fully-managed network that will give internet access at a minimum of 2Mbps to primary schools, with 10Mbps for secondary schools. It will be paying particular attention to security and content filtering.

The deal is actually with Four S, a joint venture between Surrey County Council and education service provider VT Group.

Keith Whiddon, ICT strategy manager for Four S, said in a statement: "Easynet has a robust, high capacity infrastructure and has demonstrated its security expertise, both major influencing factors behind our selection decision."

All the schools will be connected to the corporate systems of Surrey County Council. Both parties have made a point of the fact that the network is easily upgradeable because they expect demand for bandwidth to increase as the schools make more use of videoconferencing and multimedia educational resources.