The practical application of WiMAX in distance education
Combining sponsorship funds, enthusiastic entrepreneurs from developed countries, and wider WiMAX network coverage, developing countries like Pakistan may get the wireless network solutions they need to help these poor but strategically important countries Improve its public education system that is in desperate need of improvement.
WiMAX business opportunities in Pakistan
After several years of network deployment, WiMAX has developed very smoothly in Pakistan. It is now becoming an important part of the country ’s telecommunications infrastructure, and its development speed has even surpassed some more developed countries. However, BabarBhatTI, the editor-in-chief of TelecomPK, a blog site that mainly reports on Pakistan ’s telecommunications industry, said WiMAX still faces many challenges.
In Pakistan, at least three companies have deployed and formally operated WiMAX networks. Large cities such as the capital Islamabad have even experienced business competition, and WiMAX service prices have recently declined.
AbuDhabiGroup (headquartered in the United Arab Emirates) subsidiary Wateen has launched the WateenHome service in 22 Pakistani cities including Islamabad, Karachi and Rawalpindi. The company launched the service in 2006 and was the first telecommunications company to enter the WiMAX home market.
Since then, Pakistan ’s largest mobile operator, Mobilink, has launched the MobilinkInfinity service in Karachi. The company is a subsidiary of Orascom, Egypt, also headquartered in the Middle East. It plans to launch the service in other cities such as Lahore and Islamabad.
Wi-tribe is a company that only provides broadband wireless services, and its headquarters is also located in the Middle East. The company has launched services in cities such as Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi this year. All three cities have adopted mobile 802.16eWiMAX technology in the 3.5GHz band.
According to the WiMAX Forum, at least two other operators, Supernet and BurraqTelecom, also plan to launch WiMAX services in Pakistan.
WiMAX network supports distance education
KZOEducaTIon, located in Herndon, Virginia, is a company that mainly develops online interactive learning content and technology. PhilCruver, its president, believes that WiMAX will play a "critical" role in Pakistan's own efforts to promote the development of its public education system.
Cruver hopes that the Web2.0 learning technology developed by its company can contribute to helping this country with huge demand but lack of resources to provide high-quality education at a very low cost.
The number of literate people in Pakistan is only about 50%, while the proportion of girls is even lower. Now, the country has about 1.3 million teachers, but to achieve the required standards (in terms of education), this number needs to be doubled.
Cruver's idea is to provide learning courses based on interactive streaming video over the WiMAX network. KZO has invested its own funds and started a pilot project in Islamabad. The project connects the networks of two schools (a boys ’school and a girls’ school) to the WiMAX network operated by Pakistani operator Wateen Telecom.
The ultimate goal of this initiative is to build a distance learning module based on the available videos of excellent teachers at home and abroad. Although teacher training is also crucial in Pakistan, Cruver said: "What we want to do is tell people what can be done online."
Because of competition, WiMAX service prices have fallen in Pakistan. Cruver said that KZO only needs to pay $ 21 per month, and the two schools in the pilot project can get broadband network services with 1Mbit / s bandwidth.
KZO's pilot project will focus on technical education. In this regard, the company already has ready-made courses and professional knowledge for corporate customers. Cruver believes that this approach is also applicable to courses in other fields.
However, everything has just begun, and the funds to fully deploy KZO technology using WiMAX are not yet ready. But in looking for funds, Cruver is optimistic.
KZO has reason to be optimistic. The company is a subcontractor of the LinkstoLearning: EducaTIon Support to Pakistan (ED-LINKS) project implemented by the American Research Institute (AmericanInsTItutesforResearch, AIR), which is supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) 9 Ten million US dollars, which lasted 5 years.
The D-LINKS project is mainly dedicated to improving teacher teaching, but it is a multi-faceted project. KZO's current work is directed at students. It launched an exchange program that sent Pakistani high school students to the United States in batches for a two-week cultural and educational exchange.
In the United States, Pakistani students will complete an intensive technical skills training program provided by KZO using its interactive e-learning tools. In addition, these students will complete crash courses on American culture and history.
In the ED-LINKS exchange project, the technology used by KZO to provide teaching content (in Pakistan, which is beginning to be used for distance learning) was developed by its subsidiary KZOInnovations. The company said that in many e-learning products based on streaming video, its platform far exceeds other e-learning products.
KZO technology can use video from almost all sources, including professionally produced courses and recorded teleconferences. Their real competitive advantage is Web2.0 functionality. With this feature, users can send text messages in real time while the video is playing. In addition, they can add tags and other notes during video playback for indexing and expansion.
Users who access the Internet content after a few months can use these tags to target specific parts of the course. Annotations may include early user comments on the content, as well as links to related content on the Internet. Cruver said: "Now, we call it Learning2.0".
KZOInnovations, created a few years ago, focuses on developing KZO knowledge assets for business applications, and the e-learning platform is one of the results.
Because KZO technology is created around streaming video, broadband Internet access is necessary to use it for distance learning, which has not yet been achieved in most developing countries such as Pakistan. However, although Pakistan is plagued with other problems, such as a weak economy and underfunded education systems, the telecommunications industry is a major highlight.
Realistic challenges in the development of WiMAX
Allegedly, Wateen encountered some obstacles in the past development process, including the unstable network performance in the initial operation period, the client device is prone to failure, and the Wateen service was complained by customers. Now, with the support of WiMAX network, these problems have been solved.
However, the cost of WiMAX client equipment is 50-80 US dollars, which is also an economic burden for the poorer Pakistani people. Therefore, it is not surprising that operators have listed enterprises as the primary customer target, high-end mobile office workers as the second, and educational institutions as the last.
Cruver is very satisfied with Wateen's service. He said: "The service is opened very quickly, and it will be opened when you pay the money, and it will run 24 hours a day."
The biggest problem with the local application of WiMAX services comes from power outages. Each power outage can paralyze the network for several hours. However, as Cruver said, power outages are part of Pakistan ’s daily life, and all parties involved in the pilot project are used to it.
Despite frequent power outages, hundreds of students have registered for social networking courses on the KZO school platform. As soon as power is restored, teachers will flock to download lesson plans.
When KZO entered the Pakistani market, it did not take WiMAX into account. Cruver said, "To be honest, we didn't know that there was WiMAX technology. Now Pakistan has the first WiMAX network covering the whole country.
In the short term, WiMAX services will not cover rural areas. However, wireless local loop (WLL) traffic for rural and suburban services can be backhauled through 900MHz, Wi-Fi, and other technologies.
This is good news for Cruve. He believes that WiMAX is very critical and can be used in combination with the company's technology to solve the shortage of teachers in Pakistan. Cruver claimed to be interested in cooperating with fund institutions, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and an anonymous "listed company" and has received some positive feedback.
He said: "First of all, we must prove that our model is feasible through the operational data of the pilot project before we can proceed to the next step."
At the same time, KZO's plan is currently the only project to apply WiMAX to the education field in Pakistan. However, Mobilink also intends to work with UNESCO to provide knowledge training services for female students in Pakistan through mobile phones. He speculates that the project will eventually turn to WiMAX-based Infinity services provided by the company.
Note: GerryBlackwell is a senior technology news reporter and contributing writer for Wi-FiPlanet
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