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On average, in our schools there are only 12 pupils per off-line computer and 24 per computer connected to the Internet. In 8 out of 10 European primary and secondary schools, pupils have access to the Internet. However, average numbers do not reveal the whole reality. We should ask ourselves if this situation is really "convenient".

The eEurope 2002 Action plan of the European Commission calls for “the provision of convenient access to the Internet and multimedia resources for all schools, teachers and students”. Given the Merriam-Webster definition of convenient as being suitable, proper, handy, it becomes pretty clear when looking around European Schools that we have still a long way to go.

Broadband Technologies Remain Marginally Used in European Schools

Though broadband technologies such as cable and DSL have made remarkable breakthroughs in some countries - ADSL accounts for one out of two school connections in Finland and Denmark; and cable modems account for one out of four school connections in the Netherlands – they remain marginally used by European primary and secondary schools in general. Not only are costs a barrier in some regions, broadband access is simply more developed in metropolitan and urban areas, for reasons to do with market demand. In many isolated and/or rural areas, people are simply unable to take advantage of modern communication technologies that are available to their urban peers. To give some examples: for the foreseeable future, large parts of Scotland, Wales and England will remain excluded from terrestrial or wireline broadband offers. So is almost any location in Ireland outside of Dublin. The same counts for some communities on islands in the Netherlands, in villages in the French Alps and Pyrenees, on Greek islands, or almost anywhere in Portugal outside Porto and Lisbon, …

Rural areas, the "last mile of connectivity"

Both in developing as well as developed countries these rural communities represent the “last mile of connectivity” (or the “first mile” if you look at it from a rural perspective) with regard to access to (broadband) Internet services. They lag behind as wiring the last mile in rural areas simply is not economically viable. As the public service obligation has been suppressed in most countries due to the deregulation and subsequent privatisation of the telecom sector, only denser populated and wealthier regions are equipped with fast connections. Many inhabitants of rural areas have had to accept the fact that they are stuck with an analogue telephone dial up Internet connection or, in some particularly isolated situations, with no connection at all. For many institutions and organisations including schools, SME’s and telework centres this is increasingly a problem as they, like their peers in cities and towns, also need to access multimedia resources from the world wide web. It is not unusual to find school networks of 60 computers hanging off to one telephone connection of 56 kbps.

Connectivity for an inclusive society in Rural Areas

Rural areas in particular, can benefit in several ways from a better connection to the outside world. Generally, the Internet can be used for rural communication to increase participation, disseminate information and share knowledge and skills. This is especially true with regard to education where a higher bandwidth connection improves access to a huge variety of information, training, research and educational resources (including distance education services), which are typically unavailable in rural and remote areas. Such access also enables rural young people to learn about computers and to have access to the technologies and information available to their urban peers.

Internet Acces for Schools Using Satellite Technology

A number of initiatives have been undertaken to explore the use of alternative technologies to bridge the gap. One such initiative is the SchoolSat project in Ireland. This service provides fast access to the Internet for schools in Donegal County, a sparsely populated and remote region on the West coast of Ireland, using leading edge satellite technology and supported by the Telecommunications Department of the European Space Agency (ESA) under the ARTES 3 Multimedia programme.

At the moment, the SchoolSat service connects 9 secondary schools in Donegal and the Donegal Education Centre to the Internet via 2-way satellite, which makes a telephone connection unnecessary. The schools taking part have been equipped with small satellite dishes, which allow them to send and receive materials at a speed far faster than ISDN. The schools taking part range from the largest secondary school in Ireland, Carndonagh Community School on the Inishowen peninsula serving more than 1300 students, to the small Gaeltacht Vocational School on Arranmore Island with just 46 students. Ongoing discussions with policy makers envisage the expansion of the service to many more schools in the county in the near future. “For the first time”, according to Colm Toland from Carndonagh School, one of the teachers taking part, “whole classes can use the Internet at the same time, something, which simply wasn’t possible in the past”. Also an advantage of this service is as George McMullin, another teacher taking part, states “Students will now be "Internet ready" when they leave school to attend college or enter the workplace”.

This is not the only educational community where satellite technology is used to overcome geographical barriers. During the Sat & Clic project in France, for example, a project that finished in July 2001, educational TV - programmes, multimedia resources, and websites were broadcast to over 200 institutions. In England, the ESPRESSO service allows primary and secondary schools to download computer files by satellite. Data are delivered on a weekly basis direct to the school’s Espresso Box via ASTRA-NET. Schools receive the broadcast via their own satellite dish. The materials that are broadcast to the schools change each week and offer multimedia resources for both teachers and pupils. It contains mainly video materials and a special selection of websites intended to stimulate and reinforce learning and is intended as a way to bring events from the real world into the classroom, focusing on their relevance to the curriculum.

In conclusion, it is important to remind ourselves that although European citizens live in a global village, it is a village with privileged "information haves" and many "information have-nots". With new technologies, such as those made possible through advances in satellite technology, opportunities are becoming increasingly available to change access to information, independent of the place where people live, learn or work. We can no longer use the excuse that the technology is not available to provide equal access to all Europe’s citizens, we simply need to take the decision that the dangers of leaving people and, in particular children, out of our digital revolution outweigh commercial constraints.
This could be anywhere in Europe...
The West Coast of Ireland