3.5.1.3 Coordinating universal service

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Universal service funds have had a major impact on school connectivity in some countries, but there  is a tendency to believe that they are the only thing needed to achieve Internet access in schools. Some education ministries consider school connectivity an issue for the telecommunication sector to solve.  This can be problematic, however, because it can divert attention away from sustainability, as well as from efforts to incorporate connectivity into the curriculum and to ensure that teachers and students are trained to use online resources.

Also, most universal service funds are targeted at rural or remote areas and, therefore, will not resolve the lack of connectivity in underserved urban areas.  So there should be close coordination between the ministry of education and the ICT ministry and regulatory agency, in order to ensure that universal service funds and obligations are formulated within a plan for school connectivity that concretely describes the roles of all parties.  In addition, there should be a way to address the needs of schools that will not be connected with universal service funding. 

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1 user comments:

The USO Fund of India (USOF)

Submitted by Jafusof_India on Tue, 2010-06-01 04:25.

The USO Fund of India (USOF) has initiated a pan India scheme to provide subsidised wire line broadband connectivity to rural institutions (schools, local government offices, health centres etc) in addition to individual rural subscribers. This includes special, very low tariff plans and subsidized connectivity, modems and computing devices. To this end, USOF, India has signed an Agreement with the incumbent service provider BSNL, to broadband enable BSNL’s 28000 odd wire line exchanges in rural areas. The latter has tied up with vendors of low cost computing devices and is offering special installment plans to make low cost computers/thin clients affordable. The Agreement was signed in January 2009 and till now about 137,000 connections have been provided under it. The institutional connections are roughly about 6% of the total. We are working on increasing the uptake by institutions by spreading awareness through our field units who have been asked to interact with state government educational/health/IT departments. In some states these efforts have already paid off and a healthy demand from schools is forthcoming. For example in the state of Madhya Pradesh, the education department has requested broadband connections for 2000 schools. We are also getting in touch with NGOs who can support our efforts to spread awareness and increase uptake. In this regard, the comprehensive, multi-stakeholder approach recommended by the tool kit is really relevant and appreciable.