BT Says Cheltenham School Must Raise GBP21K for Better Broadband

The Dunalley Primary School, which alongside some other 35-40 homes in Pittville suffers from only having access to old style ADSL2+ connectivity, has been told by BT that it would need to have a “whip-round” in order to raise the £21,000 needed for an upgrade because it was not “commercially viable“.

A quick check suggests that the School, which educates 400 children, should be able to get broadband download speeds of around 11Mbps (Megabits per second). Admittedly this isn’t as bad as some of the schools that we’ve seen in the past, but it’s still a problem for the size of its user base and one that the Government could also be doing much more to tackle.

Judith Price, Dunalley’s Head Teacher, said (Gloucestershire Echo):

“It makes me cross. Why can’t our children have access to the same resources as other children in the town? … Teachers will have prepared lessons using ICT – because it’s an essential teaching tool now, they use it all day every day, but quite often they’ll not be able to use the lesson they’ve prepared because the internet drops out.”

The report notes how a lot of the children that attend Dunalley appear to have better broadband at home, but then they probably don’t have to share a single connection with hundreds of other pupils. Meanwhile a BT spokesperson said that they are “sorry to hear about the issues the school is having and we’re happy to speak to them to see if there is anything we can do to help.”

One short-term possibility might be for the school to consider bonding several ADSL2+ lines together, assuming the local infrastructure would support this, although such an approach can become rather expensive. Meanwhile the Cheltenham MP, Alex Chalk, is continuing to press the commercial providers for a solution.

It’s probably worth noting that the School is actually inside the urban part of Cheltenham and 20 street cabinets in the local area have already been upgraded with “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P), although clearly some areas have been left off the list; not that you’d know it from looking at the Fastershire project’s somewhat ineffective coverage map.