WMnet is the tag name for the West Midlands
Regional Broadband Consortium
The Regional Broadband Consortia were created in the United Kingdom in the year 2000 to secure lower prices for broadband connection services for schools by aggregating demand across a region and entering into region wide contracts. They were estab ...
,
an association of local councils in the
West Midlands of England created under the aegis of the
Department for Education and Skills National Grid for Learning
The National Grid for Learning (NGfL) was a UK government-funded gateway to educational resources on the Internet. It featured many individually selected links to resources and materials deemed to be of high quality. The NGfL was specifically se ...
Programme in 2001.
Overview
The West Midlands in the title of WMnet refers to an
English region
The regions, formerly known as the government office regions, are the highest tier of sub-national division in England, established in 1994. Between 1994 and 2011, nine regions had officially devolved functions within government. While they no ...
which stretches from the
Peak District in the north down to the Wye and Severn valleys in the South; its Western boundary is the Welsh border and it incorporates most of the Welsh Marches in
Shropshire and
Herefordshire. To the East it stretches as far as
Rugby, in
Warwickshire and the M1 motorway. It contains some very substantial English cities in
Stoke on Trent
Stoke-on-Trent (often abbreviated to Stoke) is a city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Staffordshire, England, with an area of . In 2019, the city had an estimated population of 256,375. It is the largest settlement ...
,
Wolverhampton,
Coventry and
Birmingham. Its population of 5.5 million is slightly in excess of that of Scotland and about one-ninth of the English total. The West Midlands region is not to be confused with the smaller,
West Midlands county.
WMnet members
WMnet members are:
(Originally the
Regional Development Agency, Advantage West Midlands, played an active role in WMnet affairs, but that has ceased to be the case.)
The name WMnet was invented by Roger Blamire, because there is little else that can be done with the letters W and M. One unfortunate consequence is that even the participants have never agreed on a pronunciation. For reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, WMnet was not funded like the most other English regions in 2000, which saw RBCs created in all the English regions bar London, the West Midlands and the Bristol area.
References
External links
WMnet official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wmnet
2001 establishments in England
Education in the West Midlands (county)
Local government in the West Midlands (region)
Organizations established in 2001
Organisations based in the West Midlands (county)
Regional academic computer networks in the United Kingdom