Where's our increased bandwidth?

Part of our network development plan is to increase the bandwidth available to our subscribers and to allocate to each a public IP address.  Currently we purchase 2Mbps backhaul and we had obtained prices from LUNS Ltd, our internet service provider, for up to 10Mbps.  The plan was to increase it to 8Mbps now and then 10Mbps in 2 or so years time when subscriber numbers (and therefore income) had increased.  When we approached LUNS in November to arrange the increase we were told that their contract with Cumbria & Lancashire Education Online (CLEO) to manage their network was due to expire in February 2011 and that, as LUNS relied on part of the CLEO network to deliver our backhaul, they would no longer be in a position to provide backhaul to us at all. 

Last week we met with a representative of Lancashire County Council who, in a strategic partnership with BT plc, will have responsibility for managing the CLEO network from mid-February 2011.  She informed us that, while Lancashire CC/CLEO are committed to taking over our existing contract with LUNS at the current level of provision and price for 12 months, they are not prepared to increase bandwidth at this time nor allocate the additional public IP addresses we need to properly manage the network.  This is a very disappointing outcome.  We now have a new network capable of delivering an internet connection of up to 50Mbps to our subscribers yet we are unable to purchase more than 2Mbps from our new provider.

A year is a long time to wait to find out if we can purchase additional bandwidth so, if we cannot negotiate a better arrangement, I think we will have to start looking elsewhere for affordable backhaul to fully implement our development plan.