Pennine Telecom has completed work on the first of nine zones for Broad Oak Sports College in a project, named Net@BOSC, which it believes to be the first of its kind for an English school.
The school has provided the bulk of the funds for the £140,000 project, but has also received £50,000 from Bury Council. Its procurement was facilitated by education IT specialist Equanet.
The first zone covers 120 households and is part of a wide outdoor network that feeds off a 100Mbps "fat pipe" which runs from the Town Hall into Broad Oak.
The school acts as a hub for multiple Motorola point-to-multipoint wireless backhaul links and 50 wireless mesh access points located on and powered by street lights. It is able to manage and filter traffic to ensure fair access and speeds, with a daily download maximum of 1Gb per home.
Broad Oak's headteacher Neil O'Connor said: "Net@BOSC is an incredibly efficient way to bridge the digital divide because the running costs are minimal and the administration light.
"We simply give students a user name and password and they can connect. There are no vouchers to redeem, or landline or cable connections to be installed, so take-up is set to be very high. That's important because we do not want any obstacles placed in the way of our students accessing and using e-learning techniques and resources.
"There are other aspects to take into account too, including access to social networking which is such an integral part of many young people's lives these days."
Equanet suggest the idea to the school in 2008, when it began to supply free and discounted laptops to children from low income families under the government's Home Access scheme. Pennine Telecom produced outline costings and surveyed the school's core catchment area, and installed temporary wireless units to test coverage.
The company's managing director Andrew Roberts said: "The initial survey showed we could achieve good coverage and allowed us to plan the full network. Now we have the first zone up and running we're more than confident that Net@BOSC will deliver a service equal to, if not better than, those offered by commercial internet service providers.
A spokesperson for the company told GC News that there is no firm date for the project's completion, as it depends on the refurbishment of lampposts in the area, but that it should be done in a matter of months.
Staff
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