Under the patronage of His Majesty King Abdullah II, the University Learning and Research Network component of the National Broadband Network was launched today.
His Majesty called on universities to further cooperate and work together to achieve their vision and initiatives to develop research and higher education.
The King said that he will follow up on the implementation of initiatives related to the project, which stimulates universities to stop working in isolation of each other.
King Abdullah highly valued efforts of President and Chief Executive Officer of the US Cisco Systems to help Jordan in entering the digital age.
The University Learning and Research Network is the first component of the National Broadband Network, where eight public universities have been connected through a broadband network supporting high speed connectivity of up to 1 Gigabit per second.
The eight universities include: University of Jordan, Yarmouk, JUST, Hashemiyeh, Balqa Applied University, Al al Bait University, Mu'ta and Al Hussein University. The university Network connects the 8 universities through 9 different sites, utilizing the National Electricity Power Company's optical fiber network as the backbone.
It is expected that this network would play a major role in developing and improving the education process among the eight universities.
The objective of the National Broadband Learning and Research Network is to connect approximately 1.5 million learners in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan by the year 2006 through the development of a modern communications infrastructure that will connect all of Jordan's universities, public schools, educational institutions and public access sites. This network will compliment the Kingdom's strategy to modernize its education system, in part through the introduction of ITC as an integral part of the learning process of Jordanian students.
Minister of Information and Communications Technology Fawaz Zu'bi said that the University learning and Research Network is a key move forward in enhancing university to university interaction, research and development, catalyzing innovation and advancing learning for all of our university students. "His Majesty's support and commitment to education reform and to bridging the digital gap between Jordan and the advanced world and providing infrastructure for education in the future, was the motive behind these developments," he added.
President of Cisco Systems John Chambers for his part said that Jordan's use of this network is a basic and unique change, noting that Jordan is the only Arab country in which its universities are connected to such network.
Presidents of the eight public universities affirmed in a videoconference with His Majesty the King, the commitment of their universities to implement their initiatives to transfer university learning to digital learning, through which they could benefit from the experiences of various universities professors.