Internet and broadband services

Find out what internet and broadband services we can provide for schools.

Suffolk Schools Broadband service

It has never been more important for high speed, secure, reliable broadband connections that support the delivery of education either in the classroom or remotely using virtual classroom technologies like Microsoft Teams or Zoom.

Through our partners, Suffolk County Council can provide schools and education establishments with a range of private public sector compliant network connections including, Full Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) and Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) circuits. The service runs on a public sector compliant network connection and includes DDoS protection, managed firewalls and Smoothwall web filtering.

Suffolk County Council has also been working with the Department for Education and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to obtain funding for Suffolk schools for full fibre 1Gb capable broadband connections. In these locations CityFibre dedicated fibre to the premise circuits are available throughout 2020/21 with no installation costs. Find out more about the Suffolk Cloud Network.

Suffolk schools broadband service benefits

New Full fibre to premises circuits with no legacy technology
Fully managed public sector compliant service with a single point of contact for issues and requests
Smoothwall content filtering to keep children safe on-line
Distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection to prevent cyber-attacks targeted at schools on the network
Low latency connections as the network has been designed and optimised to process very high volume of data messages with minimal delay. This means no waiting around for websites to load.
1Gb connection delivering download speeds of over 900Mbps with bandwidth that is comfortably able to cater for future growth in the number of devices you have in the school.

Withdrawing from the Broadband Service

If you wish to terminate this service, please contact the IT Service Desk on 01473 265555 or send an email to SchoolsITservices@suffolk.gov.uk to discuss your options.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The Virtual Private Network (VPN) service is available to schools that subscribe to the Schools’ Internet Service and provides school ICT staff with the ability to support their infrastructure across the Internet. This is useful where technicians work across more than one school or need access from home.

If your school subscribes to the Schools Internet Service and you would like your IT Technician to use this service, please ask your school Headteacher to complete the form below and submit it to: ITServicedesk@suffolk.gov.uk

Download the VPN request form

VPN request form
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The schools internet service is proactively managed and monitored which means that we may be aware of the issue and working with the supply chain to rectify. However, given the impact any disruption to service will have on a school we would recommend the following:

Call the dedicated school internet update line on 01473 265555 and choose option 1 to listen to notifications of any issue affected the whole network
If no issue is reported on the schools internet line then contact the IT Service Desk on 01473 265555.

You can also check online for service notifications. Schools can subscribe to receive notifications of any outages and planned maintenance work.

Internet and broadband services

Suffolk Schools Broadband service

Suffolk schools broadband service benefits

Withdrawing from the Broadband Service

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How do I request a Virtual Private Network (VPN)?

How do I request a change to a managed firewall?

If there's a problem with our County supplied broadband/network, what can we do?