Rural Vic schools get centralised Internet facilities

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 20 August 2008 09:51

IT Industry - Strategy

The Association of Independent Schools of Victoria (AISV) has awarded NetStar Australia a $1.8 million contract to build and operate an ISP aggregation point to serve 92 regional and rural independent schools in Victoria.

The schools will connect to Victor (Victorian Independent Collaborative Technologies and Online Resources), via direct links and it will provide them, initially, with Internet access and other features such a spam and malware protection and content filtering,

According to NetStar, the aggregation point is the first of its kind in Australia and, apart from providing the schools with high-speed broadband Internet access, will enable teachers and students to communicate globally using videoconferencing and classroom content sharing technologies.

Victor was designed by NetStar in partnership with AISV and NetStar will build, monitor and maintain the network, managing existing and new connections to schools and deploying new equipment and services until 2011. The project is supported by funding from the Australian Government under the Clever Networks program. The aggregation point is expected to be completed by November 2008.

Oliver Descouedres, marketing director for NetStar Australia, told iTWire that the project had its origins in a proposal put to AISV by NetStar about 18 months ago, originally for videoconferencing which will now be added at a later date. "We had a similar deal with Multimedia Victoria in providing centralised access for government. We started discussions with AISV in March 2007 with a concept that included videoconferencing but that ended up not being part of the initial project."

He said the main driver had been to provide rural and regional schools with more economical high speed Internet access whch, unlike their urban counterparts, they were unable to obtain directly. By buying services in bulk from Nextgen Networks and Telstra, Descouedres said NetStar had been able to bring down the cost of access to the gateway. Schools get symmetrical access to the gateway at either 1.5Mbps or 4Mbps depending on location.

He added that the solution would be equally applicable to urban schools and was hopeful that AISV would promote its uptake by these schools. "We are very keen to work with AISV to promote this...it is AISV that has the billing arrangement with the schools."

NetStar is also looking at taking the concept to other states. "We have done a lot of work with the NSW Board of studies and they are looking at doing something for examination centres." Descouedres said.

He added: where you have a loose collection [of facilities] in any organisation there is always the potential for centralised purchasing."