ISLAMABAD, Jan 4: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has launched a project to use the capabilities of recently- placed communication satellite —- ‘Paksat-1’—- for educational purposes.

An official statement of the HEC said under the project, the contents in different fields of science, technology, social sciences, and humanities would be prepared and broadcast to different universities in Pakistan.

The programme will also benefit from Pakistan Educational Network (PEN), which was launched recently by President Musharraf, linking 57 public and private sector universities through fibre optic system, the statement said.

Through this link, faculty resources can be shared and lectures given by eminent professionals in one part of Pakistan can be listened to by students in other parts of the country, it added.

Pakistan’s first large communication satellite was placed in geo stationary orbit on December 17, 2002, thereby successfully completing 18 months of intensive efforts to occupy the slot in space at 30 degrees east.

The satellite, which has reached its position after locking itself in a geo-synchronous orbit 36,000km above the earth, has 34 transponders.

The Hughes Global Systems Satellite will be ready for commercial operations on February 1, after comprehensive in-orbit testing and ground coverage survey, functionality testing and beam alignment from January 1 to 30.

The HEC chairman, Prof Attaur Rehman, in a statement said the new initiative of the commission would also allow live lectures from top institutions in the West to be broadcast through Paksat- 1 and be accessible to students and faculty members in different universities in the country.

The Virtual University has been given the responsibility to initiate the series of lectures and it is expected that foreign lecture programme will be initiated later this summer, as soon as the universities have suitable internal computerization and networking facilities to receive such live broadcasts.

Projects at a large number of public sector universities for installation of routers, local area network (LAN) and computerization of different departments are presently in process.

Prof Ata said massive investments had been made in distant learning programmes even in advanced countries like Canada and Australia. A number of developing countries are also adopting this technology and Mexico has made significant progress in this respect, he added.

He said Pakistan during last two years had developed a world class infrastructure and “it has the highest internet penetration in the developing world having internet facilities covering 95 per cent of the country”.

Fibre optic system has also extended to over 240 towns and cities, therefore a very robust platform has been created for using Paksat-1 for educational purposes, he added.

A project has been approved for launching four new digital TV channels in Pakistan exclusively for educational purposes and Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) has recently granted licenses for two such channels, which will start functioning later this year.

Pakistan is well ahead of neighbouring countries which are now planning to launch similar satellite having 34 transponders for educational purposes in the year 2006 to use distant learning for education/training, the HEC chairman said.