PANAJI
In a bid to enhance the digital footprint in the teaching-learning processes in high school education, the State government has stepped in to foot the monthly internet bills of schools with a focus on remote and rural areas.
Apart from certain minimum student enrollment thresholds, schools will have to have information and communication technology (ICT) labs on their campus with a minimum of three working computer systems, to be eligible.
All government and aided schools in Goa will be covered under this "Wired Internet Scheme for ICT Laboratory in Schools" scheme and those in remote rural areas will be given priority.
Monthly rental reimbursement to avail internet services from local service providers will be limited to a maximum of Rs 2,000, and the vendor will have to provide 50 Mbps upload and download speeds at 1:10 contention ratio, besides unlimited data through an optical fibre connection.
There will also have to be a 'Service Level Agreement (SLA) for rectification time after complaint is logged -- minor last mile or device fault within 4-8 hours and up to 48 hours for major faults like servers down or underground cable cuts.
The scheme, however, caps the total number of schools to be selected for the scheme at an unspecified number dependent on the financial provisions made but priority will be given to remote/rural schools.
Heads of the selected schools will have the flexibility to change the service provider for reasons like poor service among others.
