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Strategic Objective: Provide end-to-end satellite telecommunication systems for tele-education applications to various user groups.
Target Groups: Remote areas and mainly rural areas where the existing communication architecture does not support broadband applications.
The RURAL WINGS Contribution
Rural Wings is an ambitious wide scale international research project on satellite telecommunications. The project exploits new networking technologies such as Digital Video Broadcasting – Return Channel Satellite (DVB-RCS) incorporating in parallel satellite telecommunications and terrestrial local area wireless networks to achieve the provision of broadband services of tele-education for rural and isolated areas. Specific locations such as small isolated villages - Pilot sites - are being selected that will serve as the centre for the provision of broadband services to groups of local users. According to the RURAL WINGS project the distribution of the pilot sites within the European area is as shown in the following table:
Every pilot site will be equipped with the necessary infrastructure (DVB/RCS terminals, dish antenna, PCs, peripherals, webcams etc) in order the user to be able to access the internet backbone via satellite with a data rate up to 4Mbps downlink / 2Mbps uplink. Apart from that and through the RURAL WINGS project web portal, the pilot site user will be able to access specific e-learning applications and web based e-tools covering a full range of knowledge items such as elementary education subjects, remote, scientific experiments, farmer’s training, videoconference sessions, health aspects training and experience, business and corporate training and local municipalities issues among others.
The RURAL WINGS pilot sites, within 13 European countries, are covered by different Satellite providers: Eutelsat, HellasSat, while Avanti Telecommunications offers satellite coverage for the UK sites. An end-to-end system architecture is being set where the WiFi networks deployment is examined. The pilot sites selection is being made according to pre-set criteria based on the user needs. A robust and sound educational framework lies beneath the development of concrete implementation scenarios. Three Runs of operation will take place during the project’s lifetime where all equipment, e-learning platforms and e-tools with the relevant implementation education scenarios will be tested and evaluated.
The role of National Coordinator
The National coordinator is a key partner in every country where pilot sites will be installed, who is responsible for the selection of pilot sites, the definition of user needs, the installation of the equipment, the contacts and liaisons with local authorities and groups of people and the successful operation of the whole implementation procedure. The National Coordinator serves as a “change Agent” between the project and the groups of users in each pilot site.
Implementation
The RURAL WINGS first implementation phase (Test Runs) will start during Spring 2007 and will last 3 months. The first 34 pilot sites that have already been chosen for this first phase cover cases from remote islands and mountainous isolated regions up to areas with extreme climatic conditions throughout Europe.
Until the end of the project two more Runs will take place and 126 pilot sites with the corresponding WiFi networks will have been installed.
Pilot sites of limited number will also be installed in schools in remote areas in South Africa (which are connected to Swedish pilot sites) while attempts are conducted currently to setup similar installations in Canada. For that reason, Athabasca University has already been made Associated Partner to the RURAL WINGS project and will serve as National Coordinator for the Canada sites.
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