About Eastserve 3

Contents

Introduction 3

About Eastserve 3

The Beginning 3

Present Day 5

PC Repair Centre 5

Boadadband Services 6

The Network 6

Overview 6

Technical specification 7

Network Map 8

Network Operation 10

Pricing Policy 11

Eastserve Assets 12

Management Reports 13

Impact of Eastserve 15

Award Winning Nominee 15

East Manchester is one of the world's top seven intelligent communities 16

Introduction

Set up in 2000, Eastserve was designed to help to close the digital divide by providing residents in New East Manchester area with access to interactive public services and local information through a community web portal, the opportunity to purchase subsidised PCs, to access the internet through the development of an affordable wireless broadband network and to undertake introductory ICT tuition.

The aim of the service is to help bridge the digital divide experienced by residents of deprived neighbourhoods in comparison to those living in other areas by making ICT more accesible and affordable and developing different approaches to delivering services. Access to ICT is increasingly important in education and in securing employment opportunities, therefore, there is a clear economic benefit to this approach.

This document aims to provide an outline of the Eastserve programme, its’ current status and the extent to which Eastserve has positively impacted on the lives of current and former users and its’ success as a project.

About Eastserve

The Beginning

Could EastServe be the ultimate e-Inclusion?
East Manchester has been identified as one of the most deprived areas of Manchester and, indeed, the country. As a result a massive regeneration programme has been underway since 1999 spearheaded by the Urban Regeneration Company, New East Manchester and New Deal for Communities. Significant progress has been made to tachle the physical, economic and social conditions across the area. Eastserve was developed as one of the key projects emerging from this regeneration to bridge the digital divide.

Before EastServe
Back in 1999 in Geneva, UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan stated, “Today, being cut off from basic telecommunications services is a hardship almost as acute as a lack of jobs, shelter, food, health care and drinkable water.” In East Manchester, where engineering and cotton spearheaded the Industrial Revolution, this digital divide manifested itself in the form of unemployment at over 15%, around three times higher than the national average. The collapse of traditional industries left East Manchester in a state of dereliction with indicators of deprivation resembling a third world state. ICT was seen as a catalyst to crime reduction, to improvements in health, literacy and educational attainment and as an aid to programmes improving the physical environment and tackling poor housing.

PHASE 1 - The Basics
The creation of a virtual town hall – a website with interactive delivery of key local services – policing, housing, employment and training and street based services - was developed. Access was aided through the subsidised distribution of 350 recycled computers and setting up of 10 community free internet Access points.

PHASE 2 – Increasing Access to Computers and the Internet
Funding from “Wired Up Communities”, a Government experiment in tackling the digital divide, and New Deal for Communities, funded a further 3,500 subsidised computers; new machines costing £200 and recycled £50. Installation, delivery and 3 months dial-up connection were included free in the package along with 3 hours introductory training. The local Credit Union provided immediate low cost loans and 9 local ICT Learning Centres were set up together with a low cost computer repair service. Since 25% of local residents did not have a landline telephone, a wireless broadband network was developed offering affordable broadband access from £6 monthly without any contract or hidden costs.

Phase 3 – Expanding the Wireless Network
Network coverage was more than doubled and a further 1700 PC packages supplied to a wider geographical area. Support for disabled and elderly residents were supported. Wireless networking linked homes, schools and ICT Learning Centres.
With over 5,500 PC packages distributed and over 2,000 regular broadband customers in December 2006, Eastserve had developed into the largest community wireless network in Europe.
Surveys conducted in East Manchester reveal:-

· Broadband access grew from 2% in 2001 to 25% in 2005 and overall 75% of residents have internet access.

· PC ownership increased from 19% in 2001 to 52% in 2005%.

· 57% of residents identified access to online services through Eastserve as beneficial, highlighting improved communication with family and their community.

Crucially unemployment in East Manchester is now a third of what it was in 1999.

Eastserve’s own surveys reveal:-

· Over 650 reports in a 9 month period to it’s Anonymous Crime Reporting service.

· In excess of 12,500 enquiries since 2004 to the Eastserve Interactive Jobs Database; growing from 300 per month in early 2005 to a current level of around 1,000 per month. During 2004 over 16% of respondents to the database gained employment and a further 8% were helped to source job applications.

· Following the introductory training, 62% of respondents went on to undertake further training and 44% of these obtained a recognised qualification.

Eastserve’s low cost repairs helped over 10% of residents with IT hardware and software problems in the last 12 months

Present Day

Today Eastserve has two revenue streams to the project - the provision of wireless Broadband services and a PC repair centre. Whilst Eastserve no longer offers PC’s for sale it operates a PC repair centre on site for customers. The scale of charges are very competitive in comparison to other hight street repair services whilst remaining accessible for people in the East Manchester area.

PC Repair Centre

A full range of PC servicing from a general health check to component and software installations. Eastserve, on the whole, does not provide components for resale although it does point customers in the right direction where they can be obtained for a competitive price. Following are the scale of charges we offer:

Health check
Includes Scandisk, Virus check, Disk De-fragmentation. Cleaning of parts, spy ware removal, windows updates, install free Anti-Virus program with updates. / £30
Re-install of Windows* (basic system + windows updates) + install free to use Anti-Virus program and updates.
* this price applies to customers with Eastserve PCs Only. / £30
Complete re-install of Windows
+ Windows Updates and installation of free to use Anti-Virus program and updates. Customer must supply genuine Microsoft Windows disk with a valid serial number. / £40
Installation of additional additional software packages
.(must be original programs with serial number if required). / £10
New Hardware Installations.
Floppy Drives, CD\DVD Rom drives, Second Hard Drive (without windows operating system) / £15
Sound/Video Card inc drivers, Memory (RAM), Power Pack, (Internal items) / £15
Installation of external items i.e. Scanners, Printers, Digital Cameras etc (including software and drivers) / £15
Install replacement Hard Drive including Windows Re-install and updates with free to use Anti-virus program. (non Eastserve PC owners must provide a legitimate operating system with a valid serial number) / £45
Motherboard installation
including Windows operating System + Updates + drivers. Total system rebuilds / £50
Callout Charges:
£20 for the 1st hour and £10 for every extra half hour PLUS the price of the repairs.

Boadadband Services

Previously regeneration funding provided the capital to connect custoers to the Network free of charge. As there is no longer any grant funding all installations are paid by the customer who then receives free service up to the value of that connection. To keep connection costs to a minimum antenna that are no longer used by ex-users are recovered and recycled. For new customer connections to Eastserve the services of a local contractor are utilised, secured through a competitive procurement process. This includes service calls to customers that cannot be dealt with by the inhouse service technician.

In addition to customer CPE equipment the same contractor is utilised for installing and service of access points across the network.

The Network

Overview

Eastserve network design has been built around groups of users that link to distribution Access Points using the unlicensed 2.4Ghz frequency and are separated from other groups of users and the network backbone by routers interconnected with 5.8Ghz wireless links.

The network currently uses Alvarion Breeze Access VL and Mikrotik Routerboard RB532A wireless bridges for the 5.8Ghz backbone links along with Cisco350 AccessPoints and Mikrotik Routerboard RB532A External AccessPoints for the 2.4Ghz distribution. Mikrotik OS, Cisco2811 and Microsoft Server2000 RRAS perform the various OSPF routing throughout the network. Bandwidth management and monitoring is carried out by 2 x Packeteer Shapers located at the 2 Internet feeds.

Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) used throughout the network include: Cisco350 wireless PCI card c/w patch antenna, Engenius wireless bridge c/w patch antenna, Generic b/g 21dBm wireless bridge c/w patch antenna and Repeatit SU2410 wireless subscriber units.

Technical specification

Backbone links

Single/Dual Cabinet:

Multiple wireless ethernet bridges, Subscriber units and access units (2.4 Ghz Cisco unlicensed, 2.4 and 5 Ghz Mikro Tik OS wireles, 5.8 Ghz Alvarion Licensed)

Multiple routers, MS Windows 2000 Server, MikroTik OS, Cisco 2811

Microsoft Windows 2000 Server as a Domain Controller for Customer Authentication with Active Directory, Radius Server, DHCP and DNS.

Multiple MegaRac cards incorporated within Routers

Multiple APC UPS backups

Multiple APC Master switches

Multiple Cisco 2950 Switches

In addition at the Ethernet Gateway Sites (x2)

Single Cisco 2691 Router

20Mb Fibre feed to internet

Packateer packetshaper 6500 (v7.2.1g1 used for bandwidth monitoring, traffic asnalysis and bandwidth management

Netsweeper content filtering Server

External from cabinet:

Vertical and horizontal sectors and Directional antennas

2.4 Ghz, 5Ghz and 5.8 Ghz point to point and point to mulitpoint links to backbone sites, fixed point customers, schools and customer distribution access point. All backbone sites all linked via Alvarion Breeze Access VL 5.8 Ghz Units

Access Point located at customers sites

Single cainet:

Single/Multiple Wireless Cisco 350 series Access points (2.4Ghz Cisco Unlicensed)

Single router consisiting of MS Windows 2000 server

Single MegaRac card incorporated within the router

Single APS UPS backup

Single APS master switch

Single Cisco 2950 Switch

Single Micro form factor MikroTik Router, multiple wired/wireless interfaces

IP56 unit with 2.4 Ghz Distribution and 5.8 Ghz back haul

In addition to the above:

Externally mounted Omni-directional antenna(s), vertical or horizontal sector(s) (2.4 Ghz)

Externally mounted sector back haul link (5.8 Ghz)

Network Map

Following is a current map of the network illustrating the reach and potential within the East Manchester area

June 2008

Page 18 of 18

Network Operation

Network management is over seen by Castle Rock SNMPc network management software, providing a windows based user friendly environment capable of the following.

· Monitors SNMP devices, WAN Links, Servers and Applications

· Supports SNMP v1, v2c and secure SNMP v3

· Scalable, Distributed Architecture

· Email/Pager Event Notification

· Vendor Independent - Manages any SNMP device from any vendor

· Key Network Metrics (e.g. Utilization)

· Automatic WEB & Printed Trend Reports

· Live/Standby Servers with automatic failover

· Automatic Baseline Alarms

· Runs as Windows Service

· Remote Console & JAVA Access

· Real-time MIB Displays

· Automated Network Discovery

· Programming & Scripting Interfaces

· OEM Version Available

Pricing Policy

Given the demographic profile of East Manchester it as essential to have a pricing policy that ensures accesibility and affordability to the network and internet. This includes a scale of charges with varying speeds to reflect this, starting with a very competitive entry level price. The scale of charges can be seen in the table below:

BRONZE - up to 150k
£6 per month
SILVER - up to 256k
£10 per month
GOLD - up to 512k
£16 per month
PLATINUM - up to 2048k
£20 per month
TITANIUM - up to 4096k

Speeds are doubled for those customers who pay by direct debit or standing order or who pay by cash or cheque on a regular basis. Customers of Eastserve benefit from an ultra flexible pay as you go broadband service with no minimum contract term and a wide ranging method of payment types.

§ Always on High speed broadband

§ No landline required as Wireless connectivity

§ 2 gigabyte download limit

§ Payment methods from Direct Debit, Credit/Debit card (by phone or in person) or cash over the counter at the office.

§ Customers who pay by Direct Debit or Standing Orderget their speed doubled.

There are various other associated charges for moving house, reconfiguring routers etc. and can be seen in the table below:

Activity / Charge
House Move / £85
Re-termination of Coax or cat5 cable / £20
Cisco card to bridge exchange / £5
Configuration of routers at office / £20
Configuration of router at customer premises / £30
Configuration of router and USB dongle at office / £30
Configuration of router and USB dongle at customer premises / £40
Engineer call out to activate new connections / £25

Eastserve Assets

Apart from the Network equipment deployed in the East Manchester area, there are a number of Assets owned by the project and housed in our offices.

Management Reports

N.B Reason codes are as follows:

1. Moving out of area

2. Poor Connectivity

3. PC Problem

4. Found Better Deal

5. Poor Customer Services

6. Other; Numerous reasons given in this category