Broadband & Online Services Bundle

About the Service 

Our Broadband and Online Services bundle provides a range of essential features, including firewalls, filtering and email to support your school or multi-academy trust with safe, reliable and trusted broadband and services.

Our broadband network has been helping to protect pupils' online learning for almost 25 years and our continued investment and innovation has ensured schools can benefit from increased bandwidth options and security features that meet, or exceed, DfE technology standards. Once connected, you will become a part of our private network which provides best in class educational security, filtering, online safeguarding, and enhanced service levels as standard. 

Our broadband network (CLEO) is operated by Lancashire County Council and has multiple redundant connections to the internet including through the UK Universities (JANET) network, ensuring that schools' broadband is robust and reliable. JANET also interconnects with other regional schools' networks across the UK to form The National Education Network (The NEN).

What are the benefits?

• Fully managed broadband service including all configuration and security, and options to ensure that you are able to meet or exceed the broadband internet standards set by the DfE
• Highly resilient network with multiple data centres, multiple connections to the JANET network and connectivity at key internet service provider exchange locations
• Internet with filtering and firewalls to ensure schools are able to access the internet and cloud-based services, such as Microsoft Office 365 and Digital Telephony, securely and reliably
• Inclusive Netsweeper Web Filtering with Monitoring and Alerting tools for online safeguarding which can be customised locally to your school's needs, helping to ensure your school meets the online safeguarding requirements expected by Ofsted, KCSIE (Keeping Children Safe in Education) and filtering and monitoring technology standards set by the DfE
• Reassurance, that in the event of external attack, both our network security experts and the JANET (JISC) CSIRT service are there to help protect your school. Our experts communicate directly with JANET CSIRT on your behalf
• Inclusive licensing for Sophos Central Endpoint InterceptX protection, providing servers, computers and devices with protection against cybersecurity threats and viruses
• New for 2025/26: Access to our Protective DNS (PDNS) service, provided by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). It acts as an extra layer of security to prevent access to websites hosting malware, ransomware and spyware
• Ability to support multi-academy trusts, collections of schools or disparate school buildings that have a requirement for a private and secure WAN (Wide Area Network)
• We operate an ISP Broadband Network in the North West that is innovative and unique. It is managed by Lancashire County Council and exists specifically to meet the high demand and great value that is required by Education and the Public Sector

What's Included?

Broadband options available:

Our standard options for schools who are ready to go with Full-Fibre connectivity are as follows:

We also have a range of other broadband connectivity options available, for those schools who are in areas where GigaFast Fibre and GigaFibre One are not yet available:

Back-up Broadband connection options:

Your broadband subscription includes our emergency backup broadband service, ensuring continued access via either the mobile network or (new for 2025/26) a satellite connection. This temporary solution will be installed by our engineer if we cannot quickly resolve a local fibre or copper circuit fault at your school⁹.

For ultimate peace of mind and reliability, we can also provide a permanent Backup Broadband Connection to ensure that your school’s broadband remains highly available with minimal or no disruption. These permanent solutions provide an additional managed and monitored service, ready to deliver continued access in the event of a primary broadband connection failure.

Refer to our separate Backup Broadband Connection service for more information on our permanent backup solutions, or to request a quote please contact EducationDigitalServices@Lancashire.gov.uk.

Additional Broadband option:

Our Additional Broadband service provides connectivity for school buildings that are geographically separated from the main school building, where an excessive distance means that a Site Interconnect service is not appropriate.

The Additional Broadband service includes all the great features and benefits of your Broadband and Online Services Bundle, with the added option to enable School WAN, as described below. To discuss this option and request a quote, please contact EducationDigitalServices@Lancashire.gov.uk.

WAN (Wide Area Network) options:

Since the inception of the CLEO broadband network, we have supported schools by enabling private, secure connectivity between those with shared ICT functions.

New for 2025/26: We are now pleased to offer this capability to Multi-Academy Trusts where their schools connect to the internet with our broadband services.

Benefits:

• Resource Sharing: Allows you to share resources between schools, for example the same active directory domain, using a private Wide Area Network that is built on our reliable and secure CLEO Broadband network
• Privacy and Security: Connectivity is only possible between the schools that are configured as part of your WAN
• Broadband: All schools within your WAN benefit from direct internet access that is secured and filtered by the features included within the Broadband and Online Services bundle
• Centralised Web Filtering Management: Enables you to manage web filtering, and to access aggregated filtering logs for all your schools from a single interface

Our MAT WAN offering requires a Broadband & Online Services Bundle subscription for each school that is to be included in the WAN.

Our School WAN capability is included within your Broadband & Online Services Bundle subscription and can simply be enabled when purchasing our Additional Broadband service to connect your additional school sites.

Either option can be requested by contacting our Business Relationship Managers at EducationDigitalServices@lancashire.gov.uk.

Service Features

Our Broadband and Online Services bundle includes all the following features. Please refer to the service definition for each feature for further details.

Broadband & Online Services Bundle		Inclusive Feature
	Broadband A variety of broadband options providing a range of bandwidths to suit the need of schools, or multi-academy trusts	YES
	CLEO Broadband Network Connection to the CLEO Broadband Network, providing ISP grade firewall, DDoS protection enhanced network security protection for pupils/staff and interconnection to the National Education Network (The NEN) via JANET the Universities network Includes School WAN for schools that have geographically disparate sites	YES
	Web Filtering & Online Protection (Netsweeper) Includes access to our Netsweeper HTTP and HTTPS filtering system for safe internet access Includes local control and reporting features that can integrate with your school's Active Directory to tailor filtering to groups	YES
	Monitoring and Alerting (Netsweeper onGuard+) Includes access to our Netsweeper OnGuard alerting and monitoring service, to provide schools with an online activity safeguarding system to monitor pupils' digital usage Works online and offline, scanning internet content, desktop content and user-submitted data in real time	YES
	Microsoft Office 365 (Email and Cloud Applications) Our supported Microsoft 365 Education service, includes the following cloud functionality: Email – Staff and student email including group calendaring Teams – for communications online SharePoint online – Staff document repository and collaboration environment including school website OneDrive Pro – Cloud based storage for staff and students Microsoft Office Web Apps – Basic Office functionality using Office Web Applications	YES
	Anti-Virus and Threat Protection (Sophos Central) Sophos Central is a cloud hosted security suite that provides schools access to security tools, anti-virus and threat protection Your bundle includes server and client licences for Sophos Central Endpoint InterceptX protection	YES
	Protective DNS (PDNS) PDNS provides secure DNS resolution for your computers. This helps to prevent access to websites hosting malware, ransomware and spyware. It also blocks malware communication, which serves to contain active cyber threats	YES
	Domain Name Registration and Management A fully managed service for all aspects of Domain Name Registration and Management for your school's external domain name	YES
	Content Resources for Teachers As a NEN connected school, you also benefit from free access to a wide range of NEN resources developed by other Regional Broadband Consortia and Local Authorities. Visit nen.gov.uk for full list of available resources Your broadband connection also provides access to JANET peering which provides dedicated access for CLEO connected schools to Microsoft EU, Google and the BBC	YES
	Engineer support and hardware replacement Our broadband service includes support from specialist field engineers for fast response to faults. Most of our broadband faults are resolved in less than two hours, often without a site visit Should this be required, your broadband service includes free on-site visits and free replacement of your broadband hardware in the event of failure Includes emergency LTE Mobile or Satellite backup, which where possible, will be installed temporarily if we are unable to quickly resolve a fault	YES
	ICT Service Centre Our ICT Service Centre service provides telephone and online fault reporting and is operational from 8am to 5pm (Monday – Friday excluding Bank Holidays and statutory leave days) The service includes full escalation routes ensuring that, if your school does experience problems with the service, our staff are focused on solving your issues	YES