Case Study: Reliable Connectivity in Remote Pacific Locations Connects Teachers & Students

Satellite solution brings together Marist Brothers teachers, students & resources across remote locations.

 The challenge

Delivery of digital schooling and professional learning for teachers depends on having the hardware and bandwidth in place for both the students and the teachers. This challenge is amplified when you run schools throughout remote locations across the Pacific and South East Asia.

The Marist Brothers are an international not-for-profit community of catholic schools dedicated to educating neglected youth around the globe. Since their foundation in 1817, the Marists have sought to provide education for families living in regional & remote areas. With over 600,000 young people attending Marist schools around the world, reliable connectivity is essential to bring together teachers, students, and learning resources across various and sometimes isolated regions.

The Marist Brothers required a reliable network solution to facilitate remote professional learning and formation for a number of schools located across Asia-Pacific. In particular was the need for multiple users per school site to use video conferencing. This would require high throughput connection to each site, enabling online conferences between Marist Brothers schools spread across remote locations.

St. Joseph’s College in Mabiri on the island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea was prioritized as the Marist pilot site. The College commenced in 1999 in response to the growing demand for appropriate education for young people who had had their lives disrupted by the ten-year Bougainville civil war. When it started, the aim of the college was to work with young men, particularly ex-combatants, who wished to regain an education.

Ravaged by ten years of intense civil war, Bougainville’s existing communications infrastructure is scarce. Plus, its remote location demanded Network Innovations provide St. Joseph’s College, Mabiri with an easy to transport and easy to deploy solution.

THE SOLUTION

Taking into consideration the need to deliver the hardware to such a remote region and the importance of reliable network service, NI Australia sourced a Ka-Band VSAT via Kacific in conjunction with a wireless point-to-point link to bridge the college to the staff accommodation areas. 

The Kacific VSAT provides reliable, low cost, high-speed satellite broadband internet to remote and underserved regions and locations. Quick to deploy and cost-effective, the satellite dish was easy to install by the end-user and simple to maintain. With excellent coverage in the Pacific Region and South East Asia  using high power spot beams, Kacific was the ideal choice to get St. Joseph’s teachers online and “Zoom”ing. Delivered to site, the hardware was successfully installed via a local installer guided through the installation and setup process by Network Innovations.

THE RESULT

St. Joseph’s College, Mabiri can now successfully conduct remote learning sessions with multiple users simultaneously for the first time ever. Typical bandwidth speeds on site are up to 50MBps downlink and up to 15MBps uplink.

With the successful completion of the pilot site, this scalable satellite solution will be progressively deployed to other Marist Brothers schools located throughout the Pacific and SE Asia where internet connectivity is poor or nonexistent.

Through the help of Network Innovations, the Marist Brothers can now reliably connect online despite distances, remote locales and lacking communications infrastructure to ultimately better serve underprivileged youth through education and spiritual guidance.