CNIT to use Eutelsat's Ka-band capacity

Eutelsat signed a memorandum of understanding with CNIT (Italy's national inter-university consortium for telecommunications) for Ka-band satellite capacity.

CNIT will use this capacity to set up a new satellite-based tele-education network that will enable postgraduate students to pursue their studies for a telecommunications doctorate by means of coursework delivered by the academic leaders throughout Italy.

The network will operate via Ka-band capacity on the Italsat F2 satellite. It will also use capacity on a bandwidth-on-demand basis that will enable CNIT to manage its fully meshed network with a high degree of efficiency, as well as two-way satellite interactivity.

The telecommunications doctorate consists of 27 seminars in English of 10 hours each, that can be watched real-time, recorded for playback or made available for Web-based training.

Telespazio, a company specializing in satellite systems and services and part of the Telecom Italia Group, is setting up and managing the earth stations at the first seven of the 26 universities that are part of the CNIT (Bologna, Catania, Genoa, Florence, Naples, Padua and Pisa) with hopes of going live in the first quarter of 2001.

"This new network marks our entry into the Ka-band in advance of full commercialization of capacity on Hot Bird 6," Eutelsat director general Giuliano Berretta said. "I am very pleased that new technologies we are developing can support the academic community's ambition to increase inter-university cooperation and distance-learning. I am equally delighted that Eutelsat is participating in the education of a new multimedia generation that will soon be shaping our future."

CNIT director Franco Russo said, "The agreement with Eutelsat represents a major step for CNIT in the area of services for multimedia distance learning, making it possible to deliver to our graduate students nationwide the most complete and advanced expertise available in the Italian Universities. Satellite communication for distance learning is expected to spread in the future, as the university system is strengthening its cooperation in this direction in order to increase the efficiency and the quality of service."

In addition to providing full coverage of Italy, the footprint provided by Italsat's Ka-band includes southern France, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro, parts of Serbia, Kosovo and the northern regions of Greece and Tunisia.