According to the Daily Graphic of yesterday, 16th December 2002, the Minister of Education, Honourable Professor Christopher Ameyaw Akumfi commented that "high telephone tariffs are hampering the smooth operations of computer centres in some educational institutions in the country" (READ).
He said the problem is affecting the teaching of computer lessons since most of these schools are forced to wind-up, adding that "this is a disincentive to government's efforts at improving the quality of education, both at the basic and secondary school levels."
Professor Ameyaw-Akumfi said, "Something really needs to be done about these tariffs to enable the schools to run their computer programmes. He said the option of using satellite for the Internet facilities is high on the agenda but that will require huge sums of money and the development partners would be persuaded to assist in this direction.
At the tertiary level, he said, access continues to be a major problem due to lack of facilities to accommodate the large number of people who apply for admission to the public universities. Professor Ameyaw-Akumfi said it is for this reason that distance learning programmes are being encouraged and recommended the University of Cape Coast for its distance-learning programme.
So in effect education, particularly e-education or electronic education, was being hampered by the high telephone bills of the educational establishments which use the dial-up facility for accessing the Internet.
xDSL technology is the best answer to these concerns. (DSL means Digital Subscriber Line). Whilst there are other technologies which can deliver broadband internet access to subscribers such as the satellite technology etc, as already observed, these technologies whilst having their own merits, are expensive because they require their own infrastructure to be put in place before such technologies can be used. xDSL technology simply makes more efficient use of the already existing telephone network and last-mile copper cable, and so is a much cheaper option than satellite technology. xDSL technology is also easier and faster to deploy than satellite technology since it only requires modification to an already-existing telephone network.
Another advantage of xDSL technology is that is frees up the telephone switches because dial-up internet subscribers connect to the telephone switches and transmission links for excessively long periods, thus creating a huge congestion within the telephone network indicating such symptoms as delay-dialing-tone, no-dialing-tone, busy-tone-on-lifting-handset, all-circuits-to-the-area-... etc, etc.
Telephone switches all over the world are designed for telephony and not for dial-up Internet calls with excessively long call-holding-times. Average call-holding-times for telephony range typically from 1 minute to 5 minutes, whereas average call-holding-times for dial-up internet access can range from 2 hours to 24 hours per day. Therefore the congestion being created in telephone switches around the world is very severe indeed. xDSL technology separates the internet traffic from the telephone switch by transmitting this internet data via a separate route, thus freeing up the telephone network from heavy internet traffic which it( the telephone network) was never designed to carry.
Another advantage of xDSL technology is that subscribers will not have to pay telephone bills for dial-up internet access which can be very expensive indeed. They may pay a fixed rate which is bandwidth-sensitive or the tariff may be content-sensitive.
Secondly, subscribers do not have to go through the frustration of dialing up every time they wish to use the internet. xDSL technology provides an "always-on" connection to the internet.
Thirdly, xDSL technology increases the bandwidth or the speed of information transfer when using the internet. So the frustratingly slow pace of waiting for information from the internet can be multiplied by over 100 times. Typically xDSL technology can provide speeds ranging from 2 Megabits per second to over 8 Megabits per second guaranteed.
Fourthly, xDSL technology can guarantee the speeds (or band width) because xDSL technology is not "SHARED-ACCESS" like with cable modems or the regular dial-up modems. All other wireline modems are "SHARED-ACCESS" modems which means that the speed with which you browse the internet depends directly on the number of people sharing the bandwidth at the same time with you and so your internet browsing speed cannot be guaranteed. Sometimes it is slow, and at other times it is very slow.
Fifthly the subscriber does not need an extra telephone line when connecting to the Internet. The subscriber can use his or her existing telephone line to connect to the Internet whilst AT THE SAME TIME speaking on his or her telephone. Both these operations: connecting to the Internet and speaking on the telephone can be done SIMULTANEOUSLY. What this means is that when a subscriber is connected to the Internet, that subscriber does not have to loose his or her telephone calls because he is connected to the Internet. He or she can receive their telephone calls whilst browsing the Internet ON THE SAME TELEPHONE LINE, AT THE SAME TIME.
Therefore one advantage for the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) is that xDSL technology reduces the demand for telephone lines in the sense that individuals who already have a telephone line do not need to request for a second telephone line to use for an internet connection. This reduces the cost, labour and time of infrastructure deployment.
It is not only the education establishments that use the Internet. The letter "e" applies to all walks of life and is indeed multi-sectorial. E-education, e-business, e-governance, e-medicine, e-publishing, etc. The popularity of the Internet means an extra 'un budgeted' weight of tele-traffic on telephone networks all over the world. Many Internet caf?'s for example connect to the Internet for 24 hours a day; but telephone networks all over the world are designed to cater for telephone calls which last for an average of 2-5 minutes. The answer is not to stop the Internet drive, but to find technologies which will encourage the e-growth and thereby enhance the socio-economic development of the country. The rate of growth of internet use and indeed the dramatic increase in the number of dial-up internet caf?'s, etc mean that xDSL technology needs to be deployed as a matter of urgency in the short-term if there is any concern at all about Quality of Service Standards. Talking about Quality of Service Standards, the best network is an "all-optical network". But such a network requires a long-term plan. In the short-term, whilst planning for an "all-optical-network", xDSL technology is a ‘must’ if there is any concern at all about Quality of Service Standards and the socio-economic development of Ghana.
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