Staff Reporter
The Higher Education Commission (HEC) and Huawei Technologies Pakistan organized a one-week training for Huawei Certified Network Associate (Wi-Fi) under the ongoing Smart and Safe Campus programme of the HEC.
Member Operations and Planning of HEC Dr Fateh Marri was the chief guest at the closing ceremony held at the Commission Secretariat here on Sunday, said a press release.
The training was aimed to equip the university workforce with the latest technologies involved in the Smart and Safe Campus programme. It would not only increase their efficiency in performing relevant tasks at respective universities, but they would also be able to receive international certification of Network Professional upon passing professional examination.
Over 15 participants from different universities across Pakistan including Khuzdar, Quetta, Nawabshah, Jamshoro, D. G. Khan, Faisalabad, Mirpur, Islamabad and Bannu attended the week-long training. Huawei Technologies invited experts and resource persons to deliver technical training to these participants.
The Smart and Safe Campus programme was a part of HEC’s flagship Smart University Programme (SUP), which was launched in 2016 with the objective to equip universities across Pakistan with advanced Wi-Fi and enabling users to freely access Internet indoors as well as outdoor in University campuses and provide 24/7 connectivity between students and the faculty.
The purpose was to achieve delivery of maximum data rate to every user along with multiple services (blanket Wi-Fi Coverage, eduroam, Student Authentication, Guest Portal, URL Tracking and Logging etc). Additionally, monitoring systems had also been deployed, which would allow the institutes to access, monitor and manage their respective wireless networks.
The programme was of highly complex and technical nature which involves passive and active work, site surveys, constructions of Auto CAD maps, Wi-Fi Planning through Heat Maps, Extensive Coordination among the universities. Keeping in view the project magnitude and complexity, prima facie such programme has never been executed in such a large geographical area with such rapid deployment speed facing serious budget constraints.
Speaking at the closing ceremony, Dr Fateh Marri appreciated efforts of HEC and Huawei teams in delivering state-of-the-art technical trainings to university representatives from across Pakistan.
He emphasized that technology was the backbone for any country’s education sector, and that constant improvement such as broadening of Smart Classroom Project and other such initiatives are crucial need of the time.
The participants also appreciated the quality of training and emphasized that the training has increased their capability to manage large scale and complex networks in a much efficient manner.
Muhammad Ali from People’s University of Medical and Health Sciences for Women Nawabshah said, “HEC has initiated a best project for universities, which allows users to access network resources from anywhere, any university where smart project is installed.”
The participants say that it not only gives mobility, flexibility, reliability but is also secured network which can be monitored and hope that this project will continue further in other universities, and students will greatly benefit for their studies.
Muhammad Yasir Bhutta from Ghazi University said, “Smart University Project has bought skillful resources and also imparted their experience which they have while rolling out the project. This one window operation is helping universities to overcome their technical resource shortcomings.”
Waseem Murtaza from NUST said, “Excellent Smart University Wi-Fi project under the umbrella of HEC connects the whole Pakistan at a central point. Any university student, faculty or staff use his/her University credentials to connect SUP Wi-Fi anywhere in Pakistan and outside Pakistan using Eduroam SSID.
While using Smart University Wi-Fi, students have free access to HEC digital library and researchers can upload their research paper free of cost.” Ch. Abdullah Fayyaz Chattha, Naveed Tahir, Jawad Raza, Niaz Ali Shahrukh, Saqib Wahab and others also attended the closing ceremony. At the end, certificates were distributed among the participants.
