Challenges
At the point of joining the Lion Academy Trust, the school was reliant on poorly installed domestic-grade network infrastructure with large areas of the school premises experiencing no wireless coverage at all.
Following a full network audit, Simpli-Fi needed to install a temporary network to give the school full connectivity whilst the team installed the permanent upgrade required to support the mobile devices the school were introducing as part of their transformation to meeting the Trust’s operational standards.
The agreed programme for delivery of the installation of the dedicated leased line into the school was delayed by that provider with no mitigation of the delay being possible – meaning the school faced opening without a fully operational network on the first day post-conversion. The Simpli-Fi team, at no additional cost to the school, worked over the preceding weekend to deliver a fully commissioned and configured temporary network to accommodate all staff and pupil devices for launch on the Monday morning.
This interim solution was still significantly more robust and widely distributed than the legacy network and enabled the school to launch the Trust’s new curriculum in all teaching spaces from the outset.
The Solution
The first requirement was to deliver a full rewire and upgrade to Cat6 cabling, along with installing a new comms cabinet and termination point for separately procured fibre-broadband. This was procured through Simpli-Fi’s partner installation company and project managed and overseen by the Simpli-Fi account management team. All legacy domestic-grade network infrastructure was removed prior to the installation of a new Ruckus wireless network, as part of the agreed Simpli-Fi managed WiFi service.