Colm Piercy, CEO of Viatel
Viatel, the telecoms firm formerly known as Digiweb, has been awarded the lion’s share of the latest phase of Irish secondary schools to receive 100Mbps broadband. The company has been awarded contracts to supply broadband to 176 out of 234 schools in Dublin, Kildare and Meath.
In March, Ireland’s Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte, TD, announced that all secondary schools in Dublin, Meath and Kildare will have this infrastructure installed during 2013.
This follows the 2012 phase of the State’s broadband for schools strategy, which saw broadband installed in all post-primary schools in 14 western and midlands counties, covering 202 schools.
This built upon a pilot project involving 78 schools nationally, where the use of broadband has been shown to have improved both teaching and learning. Rabbitte said all remaining 250 schools in the country will be connected in 2014.
Under this new contract, Viatel will provide fully symmetrical and uncontended 100Mbps access connections to 176 post-primary schools in the Dublin, Kildare and Meath region.
Digiweb merged in May with Viatel, a London-based telecoms operator, creating a telecoms operator that will connect 34 western European cities over an 8,500-kilometre fibre network.
“One of the central planks of government policy is integrating ICT into teaching and learning at the earliest possible time at both primary and secondary education,” said Viatel CEO Colm Piercy.
“In addition to providing high-speed services in cities and urban areas, Viatel has been pioneering in the manner in which it has connected often rural and isolated schools to the broadband network, ensuring that all students, irrespective of their location, can avail of the benefits of high speed broadband access,” Piercy said.
School supplies image, via Shutterstock
