enet, Ireland’s largest open-access network provider, has won a contract to supply superfast broadband, to a significant number of schools making it the single largest broadband network supplier to the 100Mbs for Schools project run by the national educational and research network HEAnet on behalf of the Department of Education and Skills.
The deal brings the number of schools to over 450, the project benefiting from superfast broadband delivered through enet’s integrated fibre and wireless network. This is more than 50% of the enabled schools, meaning that enet is providing over 45 Gigabits of educational connectivity for this project alone.
enet CEO, Conal Henry said: “We are proud to be the single largest broadband network supplier to the 100Mbs for Schools project, which is true testimony to the high-quality service that we offer to HEAnet and the schools throughout the country. Digital applications can utterly transform the prospects of individual students and completely overhaul the entire educational landscape, so we are tremendously proud of our participation in the delivery of world-class broadband to these post primary schools. For enet, this project is all about bringing next-generation connectivity to the next generation.”
Henry added: “Case studies carried out on existing 100Mbs-enabled schools have shown that our high-quality broadband infrastructure facilitates a wide range of learning experiences. Students can now take a virtual tour of a museum to study a famous painting; they can chat and follow-up online with teachers; they can participate in virtual study groups with classmates or collaborators regardless of their physical location and they can even catch-up on a class that they missed in ‘real time’. Going forward, the wider use of technology will also ensure that students in smaller or more remote schools will no longer be disadvantaged in relation to subject-choice.”
HEAnet CEO, John Boland said, “We believe that the HEAnet Schools Network is a valuable national asset and that the provision of high-speed broadband to post-primary schools will have meaningful benefits for pupil learning outcomes in the years ahead. It will support the development of ICT and STEM related learning in Irish post-primary schools which will ultimately deliver real benefits for Irish society and its future economic prosperity.”
The enet solution will transform the schools’ broadband connectivity, creating the capacity to revolutionise the educational experience for tens of thousands of students. Already, schools are significantly benefiting from the technological jump – in some cases using adapted iPads instead of traditional text books as a means of delivering the curriculum.
Prior to interconnecting with the HEAnet national backbone, this bandwidth is delivered across enet’s 5,000 km of fibre infrastructure, including the Irish State’s Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs), as well as their proprietary licensed wireless network – one of the largest in the country.