Minister Vaz Outlines Plan To Connect Schools To Internet

The Government has developed a three-tier connectivity plan for schools to meet the demand for internet service.

This was disclosed by Minister of Science, Energy and Technology, Hon. Daryl Vaz, during a statement to the House of Representatives on Tuesday (Sept. 28). Forty-eight places of safety are also included in the plan.

Minster Vaz said that of the 980 public schools, more than 399 have poor internet service and 220 are without access for varying reasons, chief among them is the lack of communication infrastructure in the communities where the institutions are located.

He pointed out further, that three-quarters of the student population, estimated to be more than 600,000 students, are impacted by poor quality or no internet service.

“The harsh reality is that time has caught up with us because of our collective failure to make sustained and strategic investments in the country’s fibre optic cable infrastructure that would have allowed us to meet the demand of a digitally-enabled school system, with or without the coronavirus (COVID-19),” he said.

He explained said that under the connectivity plan, “we are no longer going to allow each connected school to negotiate individually with service providers. Instead, schools are grouped based on their enrolment and bandwidth requirements and service providers are required to create a private data network for each group.”

Minister Vaz explained that each group of schools will be connected to the Government’s backbone over which they will get access to the internet and data services.

“This type of network service gives the Government the ability to share a single source of internet to the various groups of schools and eliminates the need to manage over 900 individual internet service contracts, providing instead, for a single internet service contract for all schools,” he said.

He noted too that it will allow the Government the ability to monitor the performance of each school internet service in real time.

“Most importantly, the Government will have the ability to centrally filter content to make sure that students are not exposed to illicit and inappropriate material,” Minister Vaz said.

Public institutions with enrolment of between 100 to 400 students and requiring 10 to 40 megabits per second (Mbps) of bandwidth, will be placed in tier one of the three-tier connectivity plan.

Minister Vaz informed that a tender is currently out for local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide wide area network service (fibre/microwave) for these schools. “We are almost at the closing period for bids,” he said.

Approximately, 661 schools are a part of this tender, with 66,735 students to potentially benefit. The projection is for implementation to be completed by the end of this school term.

Tier two covers those schools located in rural and deep rural communities with enrolment of up to 400 students requiring 10 to 40 Mbps. Approximately 480 public educational institutions are a part of this tender and more than 54,395 students are intended to benefit.

For tier three, schools with enrolment of between 500 and 2000 students and require bandwidth of 50 to 400Mbps, will be targeted. Mr. Vaz said 244 of these institutions, with a combined population of 277,391 students, have been identified island wide.

He said that these schools experience some of the greatest difficulties in accessing quality internet service and represent the largest segment of the student population, and they will now be connected directly to the Government’s backbone.

“These connections will enable upload and download speeds of 1 Gigabit providing the schools with additional capacity for many years to come,” he noted.