Orro upgrades network for Catholic schools across Queensland

Brisbane Catholic Education (BCE) has tapped networking and digital infrastructure provider Orro to upgrade its network connecting its schools across Queensland.

Orro was tasked to replace BCE’s existing MPLS WAN solution, deploying a solution using NBN’s Enterprise Ethernet and fibre to the premises (FTTP) technology, as well as SD-WAN and Fortinet cybersecurity solutions.

BCE’s network of schools are all located within the Archdiocese of Brisbane, which covers a geographical area spanning metropolitan Brisbane, the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, Ipswich and the Lockyer and Brisbane valleys, the South Burnett district and the Fraser Coast. Some 146 Catholic schools and offices are included in the upgrade, with some 76,000 students and 12,500 staff set to benefit.

Orro said the NBN technology, set up as a dual NBN fibre service aimed to increase the network’s resiliency, while also incorporating Fortinet security solutions like granular content filtering and edge network security. SD-WAN was brought in to aggregate higher and lower grade NBN links and direct internet connectivity.

“At Orro, one of our guiding principles focuses on providing equitable access to education, which was one of the many reasons we are so pleased to have delivered this project for BCE,” Orro director of business development David Cox said.

“The upgraded network has now future-proofed BCE’s schools and will ensure students and staff can access online learning tools efficiently, while collaborating and communicating effectively, regardless of their location.

“The program was rolled out concurrently with the network transformation we delivered for Catholic Education Western Australia (CEWA). It not only demonstrates our capability to deliver complex IT projects on time and on budget, but that education in a post-pandemic world is no longer dependent on geography.”

Orro said the solution would help increase the schools’ connection speeds by some 400 percent to around 1.7 Mbps per student.

The technology deployment was completed within an 18-month period, with Orro taking on ongoing management of the network moving forward.

BCE head of information technology Leigh Williams said, “We are now in the top tier nationally when it comes to available bandwidth per student.”

“Most schools doubled their bandwidth immediately when switched over to the new SD-WAN, and several others quadrupled their available bandwidth. The network architecture connecting our schools together and to the wider world were transformed, and three decisions combined contributed to this.

“One of these decisions was the installation of both NBN Enterprise Ethernet and FTTP connections, and the second was SD-WAN technology to aggregate higher and lower grade NBN links and direct internet connectivity. Finally, Fortinet was able to meet the complex content filtering requirements of education which meant this could be moved to the edge.”

Orro completed a similar project with the Catholic Education Western Australia (CEWA), which saw the upgrade span 155 schools across the state to support more than 80,000 students and teachers. In recognition for that work, the company was awarded the Business Transformation Award in the 2022 CRN Impact Awards earlier this year.