OREANDA-NEWS. September 7, 2007. OJSC VolgaTelecom has provided access to the Internet to 8 334 educational institutions of the Volga Federal district (VFD) within the framework of priority national “Education” project implementation. Thus, OJSC VolgaTelecom has met in due time and in full the terms and conditions of contract with OJSC RTComm.RU to connect schools to the Internet.

As OJSC VolgaTelecom General Director Sergey Omelchenko noted: “the participation in this project has become extremely important phase of OJSC VolgaTelecom activities, as its goals coincide with the Company’s development strategy – priority development of high-tech services, in particular of Internet wideband access. Besides, this project implementation is of particular importance for rural schools where the students have got the capabilities to utilize Internet resources and to raise their educational level and enlarge the circle of contacts”.

 According to deputy General Director – OJSC VolgaTelecom technical director Alexander Ketkov, “the project was implemented in less than a year, and it should be noted that about 70% of the total number of schools that were to be connected are located in rural areas.  Therefore in all rural settlements which schools were to be connected to the Internet, analog data transmission systems were replaced by digital ones. In localities where external plants construction was impossible or related to considerable material costs, radio electronic facilities were used”.

 The program of providing educational institutions with access to information resources was implemented within the framework of priority national “Education” project carried out by RF Ministry of education and science jointly with the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation. In 2006-2007 52 940 educational institutions of the Russian Federation got the opportunity to be connected to the Internet. The objective of the project is to grant equal rights of access to information and reference resources and educational programs to students from various regions which will allow for providing quality and availability of education and so putting the education process to a new level. The schools were connected to the Internet within the framework of meeting the terms and conditions of contract concluded with RTComm.RU of providing services of arrangement of communications channels to educational institutions at the rate of at least 128 Kbps.