Vic schools to get free Internet - via Netspace

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 02 February 2010 13:48

Your IT - Home IT

Melbourne based ISP Netspace has signed a three-year contract with the Victorian Department of Education to be the sole supplier of Internet services and applications to Victorian Government schools.

For at least the remainder of 2010 all Victorian Government schools will get free Internet services if they choose to use Netspace. Victoria's education minister, Bronwyn Pike, announced in October that for 2010 the Government would foot the bill for schools' Internet access. She said this would save schools an estimated $9.5m.

iTWire has asked the Department how it plans to fund the service beyond 2010, but we had received no response at press time.

In total, according to Netspace, some 1200 primary and P-12 schools, more than 250 secondary colleges, over 60 specialist 60 specialist schools and numerous school camps and language education schools will be able to avail themselves of the service.

At present schools can choose from a government panel of four ISPs - Netspace, Editure, Bright Sparks and Connexus - but are billed by these ISPs for the services they use.  They can, if they wish continue to use these ISPs up until the end of 2010.

Netspace managing director, Stuart Marburg, said his company had secured the contract as a result of "Netspace's demonstrated ability to provide a rich feature-set of application services and to ensure high volumes of web content-filtered Internet data to our education customers.'

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