59 Campuses to be interconnected through PERN

56 universities have been interconnected through Pakistan Educational Research Network (PERN). Work is in progress to interconnect 59 more campuses, which will be completed in a year. Video Conferencing facilities to six universities will be completed in twelve weeks and International Video Conferencing facilities will be in place before October. HEC & National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) are working together closely for the implementation of PERN project.

Federal Minister / Chairman Higher Education Commission Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman chaired a meeting on 12 th May 2005, to review progress on the project and took many important decisions. Chariman NTC and other senior HEC & NTC officers were also presented in a meeting.

The 59 campuses to be interconnected in the second phase include multiple campuses of universities already connected and 43 private sector universities. It was decided in the meeting that 17 universities will be upgraded from Copper link to Wireless within a period of 10 weeks.

Prof. Dr . Atta-ur-Rahman also ordered for early implementation plan to put 59 universities on Optical Fiber/wireless. It was also decided that the Fault Management System will be improved for a better service to the universities. NTC will do a network performance audit in terms of packet loss, number of hops, delay and jitter in preparation for implementation of Video Conferencing at six locations including Karachi University , Mehran UET Jamshoro, BUITMS Quetta, University of the Punjab, Peshawar University and HEC Islamabad. The remaining 50 public sector higher learning institutes will be provided Video Conferencing facility that will be prioritized on provincial basis and universities' categories.

PERN is a dedicated Educational Network for Public/Private Sector chartered Universities/Degree awarding institutes registered with the Higher Education Commission, Government of Pakistan. The interconnectivity of all these Universities/Institutes provides integration of data banks, collaboration for research and development activities and up-gradation of teaching and learning skills.

Under PERN Internet facility to Public/Private Sector chartered Universities/Degree awarding institutes registered with the Higher Education Commission & Government of Pakistan has also been provided. PERN also provides access platform for the interconnection of Universities/Educational Institutions with the Virtual University .

Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman also decided that PERN will provide services including Full-fledged hi-tech video lecturing facilities, Web streaming service for video lectures, VRVS Video Reflector service for multipoint Video Conferencing with International researchers, centralized and distributed content servers for information sharing. This will include text and multimedia objects, Video Over IP and possibly Voice Over IP (VOIP) services for communication between universities, computer and test equipment resource sharing across universities, Automated transactions between universities and HEC, Link with International research networks through APAN (Asia Pacific Advanced Networks) and access to Online University Libraries.

Dr. Tanveer-ul-Haq (Director IT & PERN), Mr. Nazeer Hussain (Director IT), Dr. Faiz Ishaq (Dean CIIT), Mr. Khalid Ahmed Memon (Project Director, PERN), Lt. Amir Hanif (DE DNW, NTC), Mr. Javed Memon (Liaison Officer, PERN) and Mr. Amir Abbas (ADE, NTC) were present in the meeting.