Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Broadband for all high schools

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In another landmark development in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector, the officials of the IT@School Project and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited have decided to enter into a partnership to provide high-speed broadband connection to all the aided and government high schools in the State.

Director of the IT@School Project Anvar Sadath told The Hindu here that the proposal was to give broadband connection to all 2,800 high schools in the State by August 2008.

BSNL Chief General Manager K.S. Srinivasan said the formal Memorandum of Understanding for this would be signed here on December 9 in the presence of Education Minister M.A. Baby, who will also launch the programme officially.

“We will be able to provide broadband connection to a couple of schools in the capital city on that day itself. The remaining connections will be provided in the subsequent days,” he said.

Mr. Sadath said the project would be rolled out in three phases, and 1,200 schools would be covered in the first phase which would be completed by the end of this month.

More than 700 schools would be covered in the second phase which would be completed by February 2008 and remaining schools would be covered in phase three which is scheduled to be over by August 2008.

Replying to questions Mr. Srinivasan said the BSNL had agreed to the request of the IT@School project authorities to give the broadband connections at concessional rates.

Mr. Sadath said as per the understanding, the BSNL had waived the security deposit, modem rental and installation charges.

The annual payment for one connection would be Rs.5,000. With the provision of broadband connection of the BSNL, each school would be able to open an e-mail account.

It would enhance the ICT innovations like familiarising the students and teachers with available Internet services like e-mail, chatting, website-creation and blog-creation.

IT@School is implementing various e-governance initiatives like Service and Payroll Administrative Repository for Kerala (SPARK), and connectivity is a must for such programmes.

It would also help in channelising the resources available in the Internet like ‘wiki school’.

Such high-speed connectivity was a prerequisite for the Eduserver scheme in which content for curriculum would be stored in a server and delivered to schools through the Internet, Mr. Sadath said.

He said more than 60,000 teachers had been trained in IT and Free Software as part of the IT@School project.

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