Welcome

LeNSE (Learning Network South East) is a high quality and high bandwidth Regional Area Network developed by LeNSE Limited, a company owned by the nine leading Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the South East of England. The primary purpose of the LeNSE network is to provide access to the national JANET network for HE & FE and other institutions across the central South of England, and the network is operated and managed by LeNSE Limited under the JANET Partner Agreement (JPA) contract to JANET(UK).

The LeNSE vision is to contribute to the national development agenda for "wired regions" and to facilitate the broader lifelong learning agenda by working in cooperation with complementary organisations such as regional development agencies, local authorities, public sector organisations and research institutions.
 

News

March 2012
Change of JANET regional contract management  - Progress Update

LeNSE Limited and JANET(UK) are in the process of developing an agreement for JANET (UK) to take over contract management of our operational services from 1 October 2012.  The agreement is now expected to be finalised and signed this month.  As stated last month, this change will not affect service to our customers as there will be no actual or visible change to operational services after 1 October.

 Maintenance and Development

Our programme to upgrade the software in all our routers has now successfully completed.In order to provision addition router capacity to satisfy the increasing demand for customer bandwidth upgrades we will be making some non-service affecting changes to our core network.  Our Operations Manager will keep customer site contacts informed of all scheduled maintenance work.

 
 
February 2012

Future of LeNSE - Change of JANET regional contract management on 1 October 2012

Two years ago JANET(UK) embarked on a national programme to take back direct control of the delivery of JANET services to individual customers across the regions.  This work has been completed in several regions, including London and is scheduled to continue in other regions over the next few years, with this year earmarked for the LeNSE region. Consequently, LeNSE Limited has been in discussions with JANET(UK) about the transfer of our regional network services to JANET(UK) on 1 October 2012.

 

The service contracts that we procured back in 2007 are capable of being operated until October 2014.  Similarly, the underlying network infrastructure and associated assets are also judged capable of operation until 2014.   Therefore, at our recent meeting, JANET(UK) has agreed to take over and continue to operate the current LeNSE network and services until it can fund the re-procurement of a  new regional network which is expected to be operational by the summer of 2014.  We are therefore currently engaged in working through the legal and knowledge aspects of transferring service and contract management to JANET(UK) in order to enable a smooth transfer on 1 October 2012.  Since JANET(UK) has agreed to continue to operate our contracts and services without change from that date, there will be no operational change or interruption of services to LeNSE customers.  For example, our most relevant visible service, the 24x7 help desk (operated by Alcatel-Lucent under contract to LeNSE) will continue to be your point of contact for operational matters after JANET(UK) becomes responsible for service delivery.

 

Until the end of September 2012, LeNSE will remain responsible for the provision of your network connection to JANET.  The LeNSE help desk will continue to be your point of contact for operational matters.  LeNSE intends to conduct another annual network security penetration test (at our expense) again this year, and I will be writing to you about this at a later date.

 

This advance notice of the changes will be followed by further joint correspondence from LeNSE and JANET(UK).  LeNSE will provide updates on our web site as we work through this process.

 

In closing I would like to say that on behalf of myself, Ewan Quibell and the directors of the company, it’s been an honour to provide this community with services since 2001 and I hope that they have been appreciated as much as we’ve enjoyed providing them.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Mike Byrne

LeNSE CEO