Cutting down the cost of ultrafast school connectivity
DarkLight School Broadband
Find out more

Speeding up your School

With an ever increasing demand for bandwidth in and outside the classroom, schools tend to need high-performance Internet connectivity. However, that typically comes with a major price tag, with many schools having to pay out tens of thousands a year for their broadband services.

At Exa Education, we've been working to provide schools across the UK with excellent Internet performance at a market-beating cost for over ten years, and with DarkLight, our latest service, we're taking that a step further, delivering world-class, future-proof connectivity at a price typically thousands a year lower than that charged by other ISPs and authorities.

Every single DarkLight line can support a fully symmetrical 10 Gbps speed - enough to accommodate for the needs of any school for years to come. We let you change your connection speed at practically any time, so that your school always has access to the level of performance that you require.

Prices for DarkLight start at just £3588 plus VAT a year for uncontended and symmetrical 300 Mbps performance, with our faster connections delivering even better value for money! Read on for more information on DarkLight, or get in touch with our team today at 0345 145 1234 to find out more!

Speeding up Schools

DarkLight is based around a unique dark fibre design, which allows us to provide your school with truly unmatched performance. However, it does mean that we're not able to provide DarkLight everywhere. Click through for a current list of our DarkLight cities, where DarkLight is available to order or preorder, including Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and far more.

We're currently working to bring DarkLight to even more cities, making ultrafast connectivity more accessible than ever for schools across the country - stay updated through our education Twitter page.

DarkLight Speed Comparison

Wondering how the speeds DarkLight offers measure up in real-world situations? Click one of the buttons below for some demonstrations - keep in mind that these speeds are approximate, with several factors affecting file transfer speeds.

DarkLight - 10 Gbps
0.3 seconds
DarkLight - Gigabit
3.4 seconds
DarkLight - 300 Mbps
11.3 seconds
Average UK downloads (2016) - 28.9 Mbps
1 minute, 56 seconds
Average UK uploads (2016) - 3.7 Mbps
14 minutes

Approximate time to transfer 100 high quality photos (400 MB)

DarkLight - 10 Gbps
~0.3 seconds
DarkLight - Gigabit
~3.4 seconds
DarkLight - 300 Mbps
~11.3 seconds
Average UK downloads (2016) - 28.9 Mbps
~1 minute, 56 seconds
Average UK uploads (2016) - 3.7 Mbps
~14 minutes

Approximate time to transfer 100 high quality photos (400 MB)

DarkLight - 10 Gbps
~3.4 seconds
DarkLight - Gigabit
~34 seconds
DarkLight - 300 Mbps
~1 minute, 55 seconds
Average UK downloads (2016) - 28.9 Mbps
~19 minutes, 45 seconds
Average UK uploads (2016) - 3.7 Mbps
~2 hours, 23 minutes and 10 seconds

Approximate time to transfer an HD film (4 GB)

DarkLight - 10 Gbps
~43 seconds
DarkLight - Gigabit
~7 minutes, 9 seconds
DarkLight - 300 Mbps
~23 minutes, 51 seconds
Average UK downloads (2016) - 28.9 Mbps
~4 hours, 6 minutes and 50 seconds
Average UK uploads (2016) - 3.7 Mbps
~1 day, 5 hours, 49 minutes, 34 seconds

Approximate time to transfer a full Blu-Ray disc (50 GB)

DarkLight - 10 Gbps
~14 minutes, 40 seconds
DarkLight - Gigabit
~2 hours, 26 minutes and 36 seconds
DarkLight - 300 Mbps
~7 hours, 57 minutes and 13 seconds
Average UK downloads (2016) - 28.9 Mbps
~3 days, 12 hours and 15 minutes
Average UK uploads (2016) - 3.7 Mbps
~25 days, 10 hours and 50 minutes

Approximate time to transfer an terabyte (1000 GB)

Find out more about DarkLight Broadband for Schools

We've designed DarkLight to be the best choice around for ultrafast school broadband services, excelling in every area. Along with excellent performance and low costs, DarkLight delivers complete reliability, with a 99.9% SLA provided on all connections. DarkLight is also provided completely uncontended from our network to your school, ensuring great performance at all times.

Along with the benefits that DarkLight brings, we provide a great range of extra services for our customers. We provide SurfProtect, our advanced content filtering system, completely free to all of our customers, giving you complete control over how your school's Internet connection can be used, while allowing you to meet the Prevent Duty's requirements in a single click.

With our exa.foundation, we organise a range of Computing events, from professional CPD for teachers to student-focused hackjams and far more, often working with our customers to organise events that they're interested in - get in touch at 0345 145 1234 to find out more!