ISLAMABAD, Jan 15: Oman has provided $3.3 million funds to Pakistan to create IT chair for higher education, research and development in the field of information technology, Minister for Science and Technology Prof Attaur Rehman told reporters here on Tuesday.
The grant was announced by King Sultan Qaboos during his visit to Pakistan last year. The proceeds from this grant would create a perpetual annual fund of about $250,000 that would be used to attract a high calibre world class professors, research equipment and funds to carry out research projects.
About the Paksat project, the minister said a consultant to assist the project team had been engaged, who has started working on different aspects to prepare the Request for Proposals (RFP).
“The government has to position a geo-satellite at 38 degree E in the space before the expiry of April 2003 deadline,” he said adding “The satellite is to be positioned in conformity with the parameters agreed with International Telecommu-nication Union (ITU).”
Mr Rehman said a technical team, working on the Paksat project, was currently visiting USA to finalize RFP with the consultant which would be provided to pre-qualified satellite operators by the end of this month.
He said bids of 13 firms for the development of the Paksat project were received, but the government was weighing different options. “We also have to keep in mind the long-term security interest of the country,”
About the total cost of the project, Mr Rehman said it would be known after the RFP was finalized and bids were invited by the end of the month.
“About 450 million dollar investment, we are expecting in the IT sector, would overtake the investments in the textile industry,” he maintained.
“Pakistan internet exchanges have been installed and commissioned at Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad and their commercial operations were started in October 2001.”
The minister said this network was being expanded to seven more cities including Hyderabad, Quetta, Gujranwala, Multan, Peshawar, Faisalabad and Sialkot. “The work on it will be completed by December 2002 with an additional amount of Rs74 million.”
He said he was also creating endowment fund to provide a grant upto Rs190 million to the public sector engineering universities. “The use of this fund will be restricted to disciplines like electronics, telecom and IT-related fields,” he said and added that “Besides the funds will be used to award scholarships, research equipment and faculty development etc.”
About the VSAT project, Mr Rehman said his ministry had approved Rs1 billion PTCL plan to extend telephone and internet services to rural areas. “The project to be completed by December 2002 will illuminate the rural areas through Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA) based satellite service.”
The minister said that the PTCL was offering two new products including partially restorable and non restorable premium internet protocol backbone bandwidth. The additional bandwidth would be available on option of ISPs at the rate of 2.5 times and 1.5 times of existing capacity.