The NEN trial providing schools with unrestricted broadband over KAREN has been extended.

National Education Network trial extension

Fantastic news today for New Zealand schools! The Ministry of Education has today formally announced, in the Education Gazette, the extension of the National Education Network (NEN) trial.

REANNZ has been operating a NEN trial connecting schools to KAREN since 2008. The Government has committed budget to the expansion of the trial to another 200 schools at 100Mb/s or greater through until at least June 2011.

The target schools for this expanded NEN trial are those that have access to fibre through the Government roll-out or other open-access providers.

This extension is part of a package of initiatives to bring broadband to schools. See the article in the 7 December 2009 edition of the Education Gazette for further details.

Full steam ahead in 2010

Work on this project will begin with a hiss and a roar in January. This will start with workshops with suppliers and preparations for tenders for network and associated services. Tenders will start to be released late Q1 2010.

As you may have noticed from our news message on Friday, we have already begun recruiting a team of people to manage the project. This team is being funded totally from the project budget.

More information

We'll be updating the NEN page on the KAREN website as the trial progresses.

Interested in the educational and architectural findings from the 2008 NEN trial? Visit the NEN page on the KAREN wiki for the details.