Staff and students at 50 rural schools in the BANES (Bath and North East Somerset) and Somerset local authority areas are set to benefit from free ultrafast broadband connectivity for life, courtesy of Bath-based full fibre infrastructure provider and ISP Truespeed. A community-focused business, Truespeed provides schools passed by its network with a free Gigabit-capable service. This ensures school-age children have fast, reliable internet access to support their education.
Marksbury School, Abbot’s Way School and Churchill Academy are already connected to Truespeed’s gigabit-capable broadband service. And all 31 schools that make up the Bath & Wells Multi Academy Trust will come on stream soon, ensuring 7,800 pupils and over 1,400 staff benefit from this award-winning service.
“Truespeed’s ultrafast broadband service has transformed school life for pupils and staff,” said Julie Player, Head Teacher at Marksbury C of E Primary School. “Before we went live with this service, our broadband connectivity was so unreliable that we couldn’t really rely on online learning resources. Now teachers can now make the most of cloud-based storage for lesson planning, as well as a whole host of valuable cloud-based teaching aids accessible via interactive smart boards during lessons.
“Pupils also get to do more real-world learning in class – an important part of the curriculum – by using school iPads to access the internet and connect with local businesses. We have also been able to resurrect our dedicated ICT lessons.”
Gareth Wright and Hellen Lush, Joint Heads at Abbot’s Way School, added, “Abbot’s Way is a new forward-thinking specialist school near Glastonbury. The introduction of our Truespeed connection is a vast improvement, with speeds reaching 200Mbps. For our students, assistive technology is an essential resource, enabling them to explore, discover and thrive within the world of technology and support their general learning. The installation of a fast, reliable broadband service is crucial to any educational environment and we are very happy with the Truespeed service.”
Evan Wienburg, CEO of Truespeed, explained, “Our vision goes beyond delivering full fibre gigabit-capable broadband to businesses and homes in harder to reach areas; we’re also pledging free broadband for life to schools passed by our network. With our free service, teachers and school children in parts of the country left behind by the national providers are benefitting from reliable connectivity and ultrafast broadband speeds that are vital for education today.”
Truespeed is focused on connecting communities and all types of organisations located in harder to reach areas of the South West underserved by the national broadband providers. The firm’s community ethos also extends to providing free broadband for life to local community hubs passed by its network.
To learn more visit www.truespeed.com