12 December 2004	Sunday	29 Shawwal 1425

ISLAMABAD, Dec 11: The Departmental Development Working Party (DDWP) of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has approved Rs35 million for initiating a scheme to provide high speed international bandwidth to universities connected with Pakistan Educational Research Network (Pern).

Deputy Director (Public Relations) Dr Rashid Mateen said here on Saturday that the HEC had negotiated a special package with the National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) and Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) for provision of broad- band internet services to Pern-connected universities on cheaper bandwidth rates.

Through the scheme, he said, the universities connected with Pern would get atleast two megabyte (MB) of international bandwidth at the rate of $2,500 per month. The rate, he said, would include all expenses for local access, nationwide bandwidth pipe and international bandwidth.

Higher bandwidth on Pern would enable collective research, knowledge and resource sharing and distant learning by connecting universities through the use of intranet and internet resources and fast internet access to 56 public and private sector chartered universities and degree-awarding institutions registered with the HEC.

He said the project was aimed at becoming an integral part of the overall educational system of the country and had been designed to interlink all public and private-sector chartered universities and degree-awarding institutions registered with the commission.

After its completion, he said, the project would greatly benefit the university students at graduate and postgraduate levels as well as the management staff of the HEC.

The existing network design of educational intranet comprised three modal points in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

The educational institutions connected to their respective modal points would now get maximum international bandwidth.

Initially, he said, the interconnection of three main nodes were on 2x2 Mbps and internet connectivity were 2 Mbps each for Islamabad and Lahore and 4 Mbps for Karachi.

"The bandwidth now will be increased as per usage of the universities which would be a total of 155 MB/month - 1860MB/year," he added.