Following the success of a pilot project, which resulted in three schools’ receiving free uncapped open-access fibre-optic infrastructure, high-speed connectivity provider Vumatel aims to connect another 80 schools in Johannesburg and Cape Town this year.

Each school will be provided with a dedicated 1 Gb/s line and will receive free Internet connectivity from a number of Internet service providers, including Cell C, Cool Ideas and Vox Telecoms.

Vumatel CEO Niel Schoeman explains that the company started the pilot project in late 2014 while it was installing fibre-optic cables in the Parkhurst area. “As we passed Parkhurst Primary School, we engaged with them about whether they would benefit from the installation; when we realised there was interest, we decided to install the cables at other schools in our deployment areas [as well].”

Subsequently, Parkhurst Primary School, Greenside High School and Höerskool Linden have all been connected to the company’s fibre infrastructure free of charge.

Schoeman notes that, by engaging with the schools in its deployment areas, Vumatel found that connectivity was slow and that improving connectivity was generally prohibitively expensive for them. Further, the poor connectivity also resulted in additional expenses, such as buying on-site servers and hiring dedicated information technology (IT) personnel to maintain them.

“Schools are constrained as it is and this initiative enables them to divert funds reserved for connectivity elsewhere,” he says, adding that it is important that schools receive better connectivity to enable learners to take better advantage of the information age.

“The incremental cost for telecommunication companies to do this for schools are negligible when compared with the potential and fundamental impact it can have,” Schoeman says.

Parkhurst Primary School principal Sanjeev Maharaj notes that, in 2014, the Click Foundation introduced the Reading Eggs elearning literacy programme at the school at a time when the school had access to only an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) connection. Owing to the extensive lag on the connection, instruction lacked flow, resulting in learners getting distracted and not enjoying the full benefit of the programme.

“The introduction of this elearning tool has . . . changed the way children learn computer skills,” says Maharaj. “Previously, the focus was on computer literacy, while the focus is now on learning, and computer literacy comes naturally as a by-product.”

He adds that learners are also progressing through learning material much faster than when they were using ADSL.

As a result of the success of the literacy programme at Parkhurst Primary School because of improved connectivity, the Click Foundation has donated an additional 20 computers to the school and is using it as a flagship site to demonstrate the benefits of the programme.

The Reading Eggs elearning literacy programme is an initiative aimed at helping learners achieve English literacy at an age-appropriate level.