HCL Comnet unveils VSAT learning system

Mumbai: HCL Comnet, Indias leading IT services company and a pioneer of VSAT communication in the country, has launched SpaceTeach, a VSAT-based interactive, two-way distance education application.

The company has done a project for IIT-Bombay, substantiating the efficacy of the solution for imparting lectures facilitated through live interactions. Launched in May 2002, following a successful pilot project, these lectures are currently being flashed, from IIT-Bombay to three centres in and around Mumbai. Moving away from simply selling, installing and commissioning VSATs, HCL Comnet has introduced effective application offerings under the Space banner SpaceTeach being one of them. The IIT-Bombay project further consolidates HCL Comnets leadership position in the VSAT domain. The company was acclaimed as Indias No 1 VSAT service provider by a recent survey in Voice and Data magazine (May 2002 issue).

Say KRESIT head (IIT-Bombay) Dr Deepak Phatak, the architect of the project: "With emerging technologies information dissemination has become much easier and cost-effective. At IIT-Bombay, we aim to take this phenomenon a step further by reaching out to students and working professionals instead of they reaching to us. This distance education project will eliminate all physical barriers to education by creating a national virtual classroom." Each course is offered via video-broadcast lectures supported by web-based course contents. These lectures are received at other centres at predetermined time slots, synchronously with live video interactions. Each centre projects the lecture on a screen for a class of up to 50 students with supervisor/s (faculty members, postgraduate students or teaching assistants) playing the role of local facilitators.

Says HCL Comnet operations head Kiran Bhagwanani: "Through the launch of HCL Comnets Space Teach initiative, we have enabled cost-effective ivy league education, made accessible to students in other colleges. The space-teach implementation at IIT-Bombay takes quality education to remote corners of India. The successful implementation of this project substantiates our innovation with technology and our endeavour to provide the best value propositions to our customers."

HCL Comnet has installed DAMA technology for the distance education programme, which is reengineered to work on single 512 Kbps carrier than multiple point-to-point links, reducing recurring charges. Implementation of this technology accords multi-fold benefits such as the ability to toggle between a live lecture and a recorded lecture; low latency and good audio-video quality; ability to do selective transmission using real-time IP Multicast. The company has installed four VSATs at IIT-Bombay, VRC Nagpur and Indore and NCST Bombay.

Kiran Bhagwanani adds: "Space Teach allows you to flash contents and data over a VSAT network, thus obviating the need for physical travel, thereby significantly reducing your operational cost. It allows integrating multi-content modules, which can be flashed out from one source and beamed across different channels." HCL Comnet, a 100-per cent subsidiary of HCL Technologies, is Indias leading IT services management company. Established in 1993, it is supported by 650-plus employees located across the world, having presence in 15 countries with 25 offices worldwide. Pioneers of the satellite revolution in India, HCL Comnet has developed comprehensive expertise to integrate widespread technologies over different platforms to assure reliable, cost-effective, high-performance networking solutions.

Also, as pioneers in cyber security through its technological partnerships, HCL Comnet is in the unique position to offer customers end-to-end solutions in enterprise wide security. The Internet Consultancy Group of the company specialises in web-enablement services, vulnerability assessment services, network intelligence and Internet performance management.