Huawei Smart and Safe Campus Project training ends

Islamabad: Huawei Technologies Pakistan and the Higher Education Commission recently completed one week training for Huawei Certified Network Associate (Wi-Fi) training for the on-going Smart and Safe Campus project of HEC.

Dr. Fateh Muhammad, Member (Operations and Planning) from HEC graced the occasion with his presence for the closing ceremony of the training. He appreciated the efforts of HEC and Huawei in delivering state-of-the-art Technical trainings to the various University representatives from across Pakistan. He also emphasized that technology should be the backbone of the Education sector of Pakistan and constant improvement such as the broadening of the Smart Classroom Project and other such initiatives should be carried out regularly.

The Smart University program 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 the areas of the universities and provide connectivity between the students and faculties 24/7.

The purpose is 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 have also been deployed which would allow the institutes to access, monitor and manage their respective wireless networks.

This programme is of highly complex and technical nature which involves passive & 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 program has never been executed in such a large distributed geographical area with such rapid deployment speed facing serious budget constraints.

To enable the local University workforce and train them on the technologies involved in the project, a training, held at HEC Headquarters H-8 commenced on the 26th of August and finished on the 31st of August 2019. Over 15 participants from Universities across Pakistan from Mirpur, DG Khan, Nawabshah, Bannu, Islamabad, Jamshoro, Faisalabad, Khuzdar and Quetta, took part in this training where Huawei Technologies called in the services of their experts from China to deliver the technology training to the local academia of Pakistan.

The Participants appreciated the quality of the training provided to them and said that such a training has increased their capability to manage the large scale complex networks in a much efficient manner. Mr. Muhammad Ali from People's University of medical and health sciences for women Nawabshah said, “HEC has initiated the best project for Universities, user’s access network resources from anywhere, any university where smart project has been installed. It gives mobility, flexibility, reliability and it is secured network which can be monitored. I hope this project will continue further in other universities, and students can get Benefits from this project for their study purposes.”

Muhammad Yasir Bhutta from Ghazi University mentioned that, “Smart University Project has bought skilful 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.”

Another trainee Waseem Murtaza from NUST said, “Excellent Smart University Wi-Fi project under the umbrella of HEC, connects whole Pakistan at central point. Any University student/faculty/staff use his/her University credentials to connect SUP Wi-Fi anywhere in Pakistan and outside the Pakistan using Eduroam SSID.

Using Smart University Wi-Fi students have free access to HEC digital library and researcher can upload their research paper free of cost. In training participants all over the Pakistan share their experiences which helps a lot during day to day diagnostics of IT/Network infrastructure. Well Done HEC.”