The Dominican government and Hispasat collaborate to extend digital education via satellite

Connectivity is a fundamental tool to promote the egalitarian development of society. However, the differences that exist in the deployment of infrastructure between the urban and rural world represent an obstacle for the most remote and dispersed populations to have the same opportunities as large cities in basic rights such as education or health.

As we showed this year in Santo Domingo on the occasion of the Ibero-American Business Meeting, the use of satellite technology, which offers universal coverage regardless of geographic location with quick and simple deployment, is the ideal tool to extend quality connectivity throughout the territory in an immediate and efficient way for the provision of fundamental services such as those provided in these pilot projects.

According to the 2022 IDB Broadband Development Index (IBDA) Annual Report, only 23.16% of primary schools in the Dominican Republic have internet access, compared to 28.30% in Central America and the Caribbean and 39.48% of all of Latin America. This percentage, which is even lower in rural environments, reflects the need to implement public policies aimed at the digital transformation of education.

For this reason, Hispasat has delivered three tele-education pilot projects to the government of the Dominican Republic to promote education in remote areas through satellite connectivity. These pilot projects will benefit 300 students from the provinces of San Pedro de Macorís (Los Montones School), Independencia (Professor Jorge Méndez y Méndez School) and Bahoruco (El Higo de la Cruz School). All these schools are located in remote areas without any connectivity. This solution has been carried out in recent months in collaboration with the Dominican Institute of Telecommunications (INDOTEL).

These schools will have a satellite Internet service that provides connectivity to a tele-education system that locally stores the educational content provided by the Ministry of Education. This way, students can download this material to their devices and work with them at home. In addition, it includes a WiFi connectivity service for the community, independent of that of the school, which will allow the rest of the inhabitants to connect and will provide students and teachers with access to the Internet and its educational content in case the school is closed. The pilots are completed with a technological classroom (composed of laptops for teachers, a cabinet for the custody and charging of devices, a Smart TV, educational management software, tablets for students and a course for teachers to learn about the management of this solution.

It is a solution that guarantees the digital transformation of education anywhere in Latin America and the engagement of its new generations in the Information Society. At Hispasat we have been working on this type of pilot projects for years in Colombia, Panama and Ecuador and we hope that this initiative will be a success that will allow us, together with the government of the Dominican Republic, to deploy this service in all those areas of the country where it is necessary. .