Come August and learning in government and aided schools will no longer be the same, thanks to high-speed Internet connectivity by RailTel, which specialises in providing broadband and VPN services.
Already 1,200 schools have received the connection and the remaining 1,400 schools may be covered by August.
Bandwidth
RailTel guarantees a minimum bandwidth of 4 mbps at the cost of 2 mbps. But there is no maximum limit, thanks to pooling of bandwidth that releases unused bandwidth for actual users. RailTel has created six common pools for the State and schools under each pool will be able to share unused bandwidth from their respective pool.
There have been times when individual schools reported bandwidth in excess of 30 mbps. Such high speeds give students access to quality education content, including videos based on syllabus by the State Institute of Educational Technology, which were previously beyond reach because of bandwidth limitations.
Schools can have multiple ports of connections using Wi-Fi routers installed by RailTel in each school.
“Earlier, students hardly had access to Internet since connectivity in labs was a distant dream. Internet, albeit at a speed of 512 kbps, was limited either to the headmaster’s room or administrative department and was mostly used for administrative purposes,” sources told The Hindu .
Six servers
Things will be even better with RailTel set to introduce caching technology by setting up servers at all six pooling centres once all schools are covered. With the content likely to be downloaded by schools more or less the same, content once downloaded will get stored in these servers that ensures future access to it in a Local Area Network environment in double quick time.
RailTel has leased Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) from third parties such as cable television operators and multi-service operators, where it has no OFC of its own to connect schools. “The lease is limited to just an unused layer in these OFCs and the entire technology side is managed by RailTel. The lease arrangement spares RailTel of huge operational cost towards drawing and maintaining OFCs,” the sources said. RailTel, which has an agreement with schools to repair a complaint in four hours, has deployed at least eight engineers in every district and operates a round-the-clock customer care centre.
The initial proposal was for RailTel to provide high-speed Internet in four districts and the BSNL in the remaining 10. But owing to cost disparity and delivery medium, it was decided that RailTel will be the service provider in 10 districts. The BSNL will serve Wayanad and Idukki, albeit through copper wire, where there is no railway presence.
