GOVERNMENT education institutions are opting out of the state telecoms provider now that it is no longer a monopoly.<\/p>\n
Four months ago, Ekurhuleni East College , a public tertiary institute with campuses in underprivileged communities on the East Rand, had to start to look for alternatives to its faulty, overpriced Telkom network.<\/p>\n
Communication Solutions , a wireless network developer, has offered a network based on a radio- link product called PTP400 that is used by Motorola.<\/p>\n
In what is dubbed the E-Schools project, the college will be using part of a national R1.6-billion government recapitalisation fund allocated for the upgrading of public schools around the country.<\/p>\n
Other education and training colleges have also shown interest in the project. They include the Central Johannesburg and South West Gauteng colleges.<\/p>\n
Rural schools with little access to training facilities for teachers have also shown interest, and will await the final stages of the E- Schools project before jumping in.<\/p>\n
Johan Groenewald, recapitalisation manager at Ekurhuleni East College, is in charge of spending R55.7-million allocated to the college to upgrade township campuses in KwaThema, Brakpan, Springs, Daveyton and Benoni.<\/p>\n
Groenewald said: \u201cWhen we merged the five campuses to form EEC, we had problems with connectivity on our old network.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main problem was bandwidth. Urgent e-mails would arrive only hours later and we had difficulty with sending folders to each other,\u201d Groenewald said.<\/p>\n
This is not the first contract that Telkom has lost as a result of its poor service and because of the continual theft of its copper wire.<\/p>\n
Apart from losing customers, Telkom lost out on a State Information Technology Agency contract worth almost R500-million to second network operator Neotel earlier this year.<\/p>\n
The network includes a communication link of six megabits per second \u2014 almost 100 times more digital bandwidth than the previous Telkom dial-up connection.<\/p>\n
Darren Morgan, Comsol sales manager, said: \u201cWe built them an entirely new network, which is now up and running with data and e-mail. They will own the network, meaning that the R1.2-million they pay to us is a one-off fee.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will be taking out all their analogue phones and installing 140 Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones so that the five campuses will be able to communicate with each other without having to pay for each call,\u201d Morgan added.<\/p>\n
Due to the lack of specialist lecturers, the school will also be able to use video conferencing applications to simultaneously screen lectures to all five campuses at no additional connection costs.<\/p>\n