Gov’t teams up with Melita on upgrading school connectivity

The Maltese government is investing in upgrading the fibre connectivity of schools around Malta, with the support of local telco service provider Melita, Minister for Education and Employment Evarist Bartolo announced with Melita CEO Harald Rösch today during a press conference held in the ministry.

The Ministry of Education has awarded Melita with a contract to connect all government-owned education institutions with dedicated fibre as part of a managed network. Melita expects the upgrade — covering more than 100 institutions — to future-proof Malta’s public schools, enabling them to leverage current and new digital technologies by removing bottlenecks associated with bandwidth, according to a press statement sent to Business Malta.

The contract award follows a public call to telecommunications operators issued last year which was won by Melita. More than half the schools will be connected as from the beginning of 2019-2020 academic year, with the rest of the schools being enabled by January 2020.

Melita CEO Mr Rösch tagged the day as an important one for Melita for being chosen as the service provider for supporting more than a hundred schools. “It is not only an investment in the infrastructure but also an investment in the future of the country,” Mr Rösch said.

“This project is important for Melita, not because of its scale but most importantly because of the impact, it will have on our children’s education. The new network will, in fact, allow the technology team within the Ministry of Education to manage and deliver services to all sites seamlessly and more efficiently, helping to make both teaching and learning more engaging and rewarding. As a forward-looking organisation which takes inspiration from the needs of our customers to invest in the right infrastructure to connect them to the services they need, being awarded this contract is very satisfying,” Mr Rösch added.

“As a small island in the big world, connectivity has always been crucial,” education minister Evarist Bartolo said. The minister also elaborated on the fact that traditionally speaking, maritime and aerospace connectivity has been important for Malta, being an island. However, as today sees immense digitalisation activities, internet connectivity is becoming more important than ever.

The minister also said that his ministry looks forward to further collaboration with Melita to enhance connectivity for both education and employment.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Business Malta’s morning report from the event has been updated with further details carried by the official press release issued in the afternoon. The cover picture of the article has also been changed to a photo of the Melita CEO speaking at the event.