MLL Telecom has been awarded a seven-year contract by The Kemnal Academies Trust (TKAT) to provide a High Speed Broadband Service as well as centrally managed firewall and content filtering.
TKAT is one of the largest Multi-Academy Trusts in the South East of England with 45 Primary, Special and Secondary Academies in East Sussex, Essex, Hampshire, Kent/Bromley/Bexley, Surrey and West Sussex.
The contract follows a competitive tender process under the Crown Commercial Services (CCS) Education Technology Framework Agreement, RM6103 Lot 3 Broadband Services in response to TKAT’s requirement to centralise, standardise and upgrade the delivery of Broadband Services across the Trust, which included firewall and filtering solutions.
In tandem with the provision of a new Wide Area Network (WAN) service that will be deployed as part of the new High speed broadband service, MLL is supervising the upgrading of the internet connections at all sites to Gigabit Fibre. This will include the implementation of enterprise-class firewall and content filtering software.
Using its Carrier Integration model MLL is selecting the best wholesale providers for delivering fibre connectivity to each site, including services from BT Wholesale, Vodafone, SSE and Virgin Media Business. TKAT’s 15 secondary schools will have full 1Gbit/s bandwidth while its 30 primaries will have 200Mbit/s (upgradeable to 1 Gbit/s). Each site will have a BT Wholesale FTTC circuit for resilience.
Kim Medhurst, TKAT’s Head of Procurement and Contracts, said: “We are at the beginning of a seven year relationship with MLL, after four months the first TKAT schools are live on the new MLL broadband service and the remaining schools will follow over the next two years. The improved broadband services will ensure that TKAT can continue to provide high quality teaching and learning outcomes for children and young people.”
