Government Allocates Funding to Improve Broadband in UK Colleges

The Government’s Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) has announced that Colleges across the United Kingdom will receive additional funding in order to help them install a second broadband connection for improved reliability and to boost Internet bandwidth.

According to BIS, as many as 80% of Further Education Colleges are currently reliant upon a single broadband ISP connection and this could obviously make them extremely vulnerable if that link should fail. The proposed solution, which is marked as a “top priority” for the government (they say that about everything these days), involves funding the installation of a second Internet link for every college through JANET.

The funding for all this is expected to be taken from a newly announced pot of £488 Million in capital investment (note: Colleges have provided £250m of their own funding), which is also being used for a variety of related projects (e.g. constructing several new college buildings).

Matthew Hancock, Skills Minister, said:

“Colleges that embrace the latest technologies can revolutionise the services they offer to students and business. This new funding to improve broadband infrastructure will provide colleges with greater resilience and improved broadband speed.

As many as 8 out of 10 colleges are relying on a single connection, for both their operational and teaching needs – including cloud-based applications and online business.

It’s easy to imagine what happens if that connection goes down, that’s why I’m allocating extra funds to allow colleges to install a second broadband connection – giving them greater ability to operate and support their students with the latest technology 24/7.”

However the Association of Colleges (AoC) has warned that at present there is a general lack of information about the funding and indeed it’s unclear precisely how much of the budget will go towards improving the broadband connectivity side of things.

In the meantime JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) has confirmed that it will be writing to UK colleges in December 2013 to inform them about the new opportunity and the funding itself appears to be allocated for use from 2015 onwards.