The Hindu : Plan to network engineering colleges to take shape by Jan.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 17, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh

Plan to network engineering colleges to take shape by Jan.

By R. Ravikanth Reddy

HYDERABAD Sept. 16. The ambitious plan of the Technical Education department to network all the engineering colleges using high bandwidth is likely to take final shape in the next three months.

The department has held talks with the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) recently and a deal was struck with the latter agreeing to provide the necessary bandwidth within three months covering all the engineering colleges. Two separate cables of 64 KBPS would be laid across the State for the purpose.

According to sources in the Technical Education department, each college would get 2 MBPS dedicated lines for using the facility for video conferencing and also for providing high speed Internet service to the students. Rather than functioning from one central location, it has been decided to have eight to nine nodal points in the State covering some specific distance for easy maintenance and better quality.

``We will take the lines to the doorsteps of the colleges and it is for them to decide to avail of the facility or not,'' said an official. He was of the view that no college would dare to refuse the facility given the intense competition and pressure from students. However, each college has to shell out Rs. 2 lakhs per year to enjoy the facility.

This is being done as a part of the Society for Networking for Excellence in Technical Education (SONET) project that aims to interlink all the engineering colleges through electronic classrooms. The project was launched a few years back to tide over the shortage of quality faculty in the burgeoning number of engineering colleges.

It is proposed to record the lectures of experts in various subjects of engineering and air them to all the colleges that have the facility. "We have recorded over 250 hours of lectures and another 250 hours would be recorded soon. These lectures would be aired to the colleges which are a part of SONET,'' says an official. Moreover, if an expert visits any college for a special lecture, it can be aired to all the colleges at the same time.

The SONET was initially formed with a corpus fund of Rs. 10 crores and colleges paying Rs. 5 lakhs to Rs. 10 lakhs depending on the strength of students.

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Plan to network engineering colleges to take shape by Jan.