New multi-million-pound contract awarded to enhance connectivity across Scottish schools

An Edinburgh-based company has secured a £2.6m contract with Dundee City Council to enhance connectivity across schools in the area.

Commsworld has been awarded a 10-year contract to boost connectivity in 42 schools across Dundee and the wider area.

The firm will design and manage a new fibre network service, allowing schools to boost their digital learning capabilities, focusing on greater use of cloud services.

The new framework will also provide fully filtered live connectivity to ensure students remain safe online.

Councillor Stewart Hunter, convener of Dundee City Council’s Children, Families and Communities Committee, said: “We are keen to achieve Digital Schools Award Scotland (DSAS) status by next summer and, with digital infrastructure such as high-speed fibre internet as a key plank of digital learning, this contract will be an important step on that journey.”

The firm will invest in 40km of new fibre infrastructure, which will provide access to the fastest full-fibre connection, with a speed of up to 10Gbps per school.

The proposed new high-speed fibre internet service is replacing the currently outdated infrastructure in primary and secondary schools in the region, which is struggling to cope with the increasing use of digital devices and the boost in online learning.

Commsworld will also build in extra capacity that will be able to easily absorb any future increases in demand in the years to come.

The new fibre infrastructure will be linked to Commsworld’s Optical Core Network, a next-generation multi-million-pound network built to boost the security and resilience of digital infrastructure to organisations across the UK.

North of the border, the firm was already awarded a £30m contract by the Glasgow City Council in 2018 to provide ultra-fast fibre to the city’s schools.

Currently, it also has a contract in place with Northumberland County Council to “radically” improve internet connectivity to over 100 schools in the area.