Nigerian partnership to cut education bandwidth costs

TELECOMS

The Nigerian ICT Forum of Partnership Institutions is collaborating with the Internet eXchange Point of Nigeria to enable inter-network connections between Higher Education Institutions in  Nigeria and reduce their present cost of internet bandwidth.

This collaboration also seeks to establish the Research and Education Network (REN) clusters.

The managing director of the IXPN, Muhammed Rudman, said that REN would serve as a vehicle for the interconnection of all the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) via ICT in order to promote content development and sharing amongst the member institutions.

The Convenor of the Nigeria ICT Forum, Dr. Aminu Ibrahim, said that this is in line with the Forum’s mission, which focuses on developing internal capacity for HEIs and cultivating a favourable policy environment that aids development.

Additionally, Nigerian ICT Forum, he said, seeks to utilise, sustain and advance ICT networks, services and shared resources that are owned by the HEIs themselves.

This, he said, includes aggregation of their bandwidth, thus driving the formation of a National Research and Education Network (NREN) to the letter.

Equally, Rudman said the MOU vested IXPN with the responsibility of providing a national core infrastructure that facilitates internet operations in Nigeria, as well as localising traffic and reducing local routing cost.

He outlined some of the advantages of the collaboration to include the formation of clusters within the next two years in at least six geo-political zones in the country; promote content development in Nigerian Higher Education Institutions; provide lower cost of bandwidth for Higher Education Institutions; conduct training and campaign awareness on the need for  Research and Education Network (RENs); and mobilize support and resources towards achieving the above goals.

Rudman explained that one of the benefits of the collaboration was that it would accelerate the creation and development of the NRENs clusters.

“The collaboration will go a long way in promoting content development and sharing thus accelerating the development of the educational sector as well as boosting the economy at large,” he said.