The hard un-spun facts about 1BestariNet.
- The project is for 15 years and budgeted to cost RM4.4.077 billion in total.
- YTL was awarded the initial part of this project for RM663 million over 2 1/2 years and their contract ended in Jun 2014.
- YTL was not awarded the entire RM4.077 billion and RM4.077 billion was not the total amount spent as claimed by opposition MPs and RBA.
- YTL received RM663 million and was fined RM2.4 million for not wiring up all the 10,000 schools.
- The RM663 million was for internet connectivity and wifi access, hosting services, network monitoring services, anti-virus and content filtering services and technical support and maintenance services for 2 1/2 years.
- The RM663 million was to benefit 10,000 schools and 10 million students, parents and teachers. Every parent, student and teacher has been provided with an ID
- This works out to RM26,500 per school per year OR RM27 per year for each student, parent or teacher.
Problems faced by 1BestariNet
1) Not all schools connected in time
- All 100% schools were not connected in time and it only achieved 88.9% (8,886 from 9,889 schools) connection success due to delays in getting approvals from schools, local councils or state governments - particularly in Sarawak, Penang and Kelantan. Those schools where YTL was not able to connect in time was given alternative internet connection methods.
2) Slow Internet access
- firstly, 2Mbps for some schools is extremely low bandwidth. Most schools got 4-10Mbps, which was still slow and only a small number got 50Mbps, which is alright only. The major problem seems to be that very fast internet connectivity in Malaysia nationwide is still not available.
- remember that most Unifi home users get 5Mbps minimum already and sometimes we find it slow too. Now imagine if your 5Mbps connection is shared by dozens or hundreds or thousands of users - recipe for slowness.
- 1BestariNet access in schools are also provided to students via WiFi. Now, imagine that students with smartphones now connect to your 1BestariNet continuously while they check emails and use whatsapp, wechat, FaceBook, YouTube and you can now imagine how come the 1BestariNet access can become slow. This is also why city-wide free WiFi such as Penang Free WiFi is a failure and slow - simply because there are too many users and not enough bandwidth. Schools must disallow students to connect their smartphones to the schools WiFi.
3) VLE Application has low low usage
- The AG says the low usage of the VLE is due to lack of clear policy and monitoring by MOE and the schools, lack of exposure to teachers and parents on the benefits of the VLE, lack of training and lack of teachers aid such as projectors. Parents are also not interested or took no initiative to use the VLE at home with their YES ID and force or encourage their children to use it.
- The MOE also did not make it mandatory for everyone to use the VLE and "chose the approach that migrating to e-learning among teachers was through encouragement and hand-holding so that the core focus of teachers is still on teaching and not on using an application". This is a wise decision as due to the slowness of the internet connectivity, making it mandatory would mean they will fail.
Summary:
1BestariNet is a very ambitious project over 15 years and if implemented correctly, will benefit 1/3 of all Malaysians and all our children's education.
This project must be given the best chance of success and not stopped or suspended just because opposition spins and say it is RM4billion already songlap (which is not true) and only 5% usage hence white elephant project.
When new training methods or new IT applications come out, adoption rates at the beginning is normally slow - for example, e-mail, whatsapp, facebook, wechat etc... also took many years before more users started using them.
Efforts must also be made to increase the overall internet speeds for ALL schools - either thru web acceleration technologies, proxy services, multiple lines per schools or drawing direct fiber to the schools. Schools with many students are not home users. How can you expect 2 or 4Mbps to be shared among so many teachers and students when even 5Mbps at home for us is frequently not enough?
Whether YTL (whose contract has ended) or some other companies or consortium takes over, this project must proceed and continually improved.
No comments:
Post a Comment