The Foris Telecom Connecting Higher Education initiative, a key component of the Digital Inclusion strategy, focuses on increasing the information and communications technology (ICT) capacity of students and staff of higher education institutes. This partnership program represents an innovative approach that allows students and faculty to purchase discounted connectivity packages bundled with low-cost laptops through phased payment plans, allowing for wireless broadband internet connectivity anytime, anywhere.
Foris Telecom is spearheading a diverse consortium of local, national, regional and global public and private partners to lead the Connecting Higher Education Program forward:
Universities, the primary partners in this program, are working together with Foris Telecom to jointly design and tailor the program to meet the specific needs and objectives of their institutions.
Banks & financial institutions have a key role to play in the financing and guarantee of phased payment plans for students and staff, an essential component to affordability.
Netbook & Notebook vendors are access partners that supply low-cost laptops for the program, focusing on competitive pricing and innovative business models.
Content partners are collaborating with Foris Telecom to promote the generation of relevant localized content and applications that will complement its broadband services and lead to the creation of information societies in its target countries.
Global content and application providers - offering operating systems, Office application suites, dictionaries and search engines—utilize the program's strategic platform to integrate relevant content and applications onto the connected hardware devices, adding meaningful substance and functionality to ICT packages.
Local content and application providers offer useful, culturally- sustaining content, in local languages, about local circumstances as well as global realities such as edutainment content, e-Commence, and news portals. This content is key to sustaining demand for network services.
Skills and capacity building partners: Instilling skills for Internet use in general and broadband applications in particular, are necessary to ensure that users reap the maximum from information and communications technologies. Foris Telecom works with partners to develop and run ICT capacity training programs for the private and public sectors.
Government participation in Connecting Higher Education enhances the program's impact and sustainability. Foris Telecom works closely with governments in order to align itself with national ICT strategies and programs.
International development agencies and public initiatives leverage the program's affordable wireless broadband connectivity and bundled access offering to advance critical development objectives and enhance their programs. Going one step further, these organizations bring added value to their projects by integrating them into the Connecting Higher Education program framework which serves as a mechanism for project delivery, capacity building, training, awareness raising, development-focused content, knowledge sharing, and more. A wide variety of development-related content areas are addressed in this context, adding training and e-learning components to select university faculty programs.
