CACHEBOX connects PNG schools

Papua New Guinea’s National Department of Education (DoE) has purchased a fleet of CACHEBOX050s and a CACHEBOXCMC, enabling teachers and students in remote areas to use online content in the classroom.

Many schools in Papua New Guinea are not currently connected to the internet and those that are have no more than 256Kbps bandwidth links. The DoE plans to connect up to 500 schools over the next 5 years but these will still have access to very limited bandwidth.

“We’ve worked closely with Education Authorities around the world that have faced exactly the same problem – not enough bandwidth to take full advantage of web-based learning in the classroom,” comments Roger Clark, Head of CACHEBOX Sales at ApplianSys. “We were able to share what we’ve learnt with PNG’s DoE and tailor a solution to meet their specific needs.”

Following a comprehensive evaluation, the DoE has purchased 10 CACHEBOX050s and a CACHEBOX Central Management Console (CMC) for the first phase of its project. With a largely rural population and numerous offshore islands, managing a distributed caching solution presented a challenge for the DoE, particularly as the solution scales up for newly connected schools. CACHEBOXCMC makes life easier by reducing the requirement for technical support presence at each school. Initial configuration and many administrative tasks can be carried out centrally from the CMC and pushed to distributed CACHEBOXes.

“Another key challenge for PNG is that some content would be difficult to access in the first instance given the low bandwidth available,” adds Roger Clark. “To overcome this, we’re pre-loading CACHEBOX so that key content is immediately available to PNG’s teachers.”
Roger concludes: “PNG has a solution that saves bandwidth and speeds up internet access in connected schools right now – and with CACHEBOXCMC, the solution will easily scale up as PNG connects new schools.”

About PNG Department of Education

Papua New Guinea National Department of Education governs education services that are delivered by 20 provincial authorities across the country. The system employs over 33,000 teachers educating almost one million students at 4,000 elementary schools, 3,300 primary schools, 170 secondary schools and 140 vocational schools.