Written answers

Thursday, 3 July 2008

Department of Education and Science

Telecommunications Services

5:00 am

Photo of Liz McManusLiz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)
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Question 12: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the percentage and number of schools that have broadband; his views on the acceptable minimum download speed a school should have; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21361/08]

Photo of Batt O'KeeffeBatt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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My Department is providing broadband connectivity to recognised primary and post-primary schools under the Schools Broadband Access Programme. This programme is being undertaken in partnership with industry in the context of a Government — IBEC/TIF (Telecommunications and Internet Federation) Agreement to provide local broadband connectivity to schools.

The Programme has three elements — local connectivity to schools, a national broadband network and a broadband support service desk. Schools connectivity is being routed to the Internet through a national broadband network, which is supported by HEAnet and provides centrally managed services for schools such as security, anti-spam/anti-virus and content filtering. The broadband support service desk has been established to interface between the network, the local broadband service Access Providers and schools. It is managed by the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE).

A competitive, technology neutral, central procurement process for the provision of local connectivity for schools was undertaken based on a tiered bandwidth provision, ranging from 0.5 Megabits per second (Mbps) in the case of small primary schools up to 2 Mbps for larger post-primary schools. Contracts were finalised in 2005 with six Service Providers for the provision of local access connectivity to 3,925 schools and with a further Provider for the installation of a broadband router at school level where appropriate. The 3,925 initial individual school awards involved a range of technologies. Roll-out commenced in June 2005. The total number of schools involved in the Programme has been adjusted in the meantime to reflect a number of school openings, closures and amalgamations and stands currently at 3,936. As of 24th June, 2008, 3,901 (99%) have had their local connectivity installed and of these 3,899 have had their router capability installed and tested. These figures have been updated to remove the inadvertent double counting of six schools that had amalgamated, following their initial broadband installations.

The breakdown of technologies across the 3,901 local connectivity installations is 27% fixed line services, 26% wireless services and 47% satellite services. Having regard to the usage levels observed by HEAnet, my Department has procured additional bandwidth from its two satellite providers to improve the broadband connection speeds for schools on this portion of the Schools Broadband Network. The situation continues to be monitored closely. Increased bandwidths have also been provided to some schools with fixed line services as a consequence of improvements in the wholesale broadband market. Over 650 schools are now receiving bandwidths of 3Mbps or higher. In addition, my Department has migrated schools to superior alternative technologies, where feasible.

A further 72 schools have had broadband access provided under the Hermes and Advanced Deployment programmes and are not included in the 3,901 figure. The split of technologies across these schools is 60% fixed line, 35% wireless and 5% satellite.

Looking to the future, my colleague, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources has this morning launched the Next Generation Broadband Policy Paper which includes the objective of equipping second-level schools with 100Mbits per second of broadband connectivity and installing local area networks. I look forward to working with my colleague, Minister Ryan, in the pursuit of this objective. Furthermore, my Department will shortly issue a Request for Tenders for the next round of service under the existing Schools Broadband Programme and having regard to the general developments in broadband availability nationally, improved service offerings are expected to be received under the new tender process.

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