For more than a year now, children across the world have been using broadband internet to continue their education while schools are closed because of the pandemic. But, for most children, this necessity has not been available. Many have been trying to continue their education in regions where internet connectivity is poor or non-existent. Two-thirds of the world’s children (1.3bn children between the ages of three and 17) have no access to the internet at home.¹ More than 360m young people around the world have no access to the internet whatsoever.²

There are many benefits of broadband connectivity in education. Teachers and students alike can access stimulating and up to date educational material. Classmates can collaborate, even when they are not physically in the same place. Teachers and students can stay in contact with one another during school shutdowns such as those the world has seen during the covid-19 pandemic. And, through distance learning, students can access high quality education wherever they are.

Increasing school connectivity also delivers wider benefits. By honing their information and communications technology (ICT) skills while they learn, students can leave school with the competencies that will help them get a good job in an increasingly digital world. Members of the wider communities where schools are based also benefit from improved access to the internet. And, on a national level, as The Economist Intelligence Unit’s report Connecting learners: Narrowing the educational divide shows, even small increases in internet provision can lead to higher incomes, healthier populations and a significant rise in a country’s GDP.

As part of its long-term commitment to providing these opportunities to all children around the world, in August 2020, Ericsson joined the Giga initiative, in partnership with UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), to map internet connectivity gaps in 35 countries by 2023. In a world in which internet connectivity is very unevenly distributed, the project will help governments and private sector organisations better understand the connectivity landscape for schools and their surrounding communities, many of which may not have access to the internet at all, and provide a concrete first step in helping to bridge the global digital divide. The Giga initiative ultimately aims by 2030 to “connect every school to the internet and every young person to information, opportunity and choice”

Ericsson comes to the project with more than a decade of experience in helping to provide internet-based learning to people who live in less resourced areas. In 2010, it launched Connect To Learn, a global education initiative that has since been active in 25 countries and which has reached more than 200,000 students. In conjunction with global and local partners, including Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Center for Sustainable Development in New York, the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative and Smile Foundation in India, it has delivered reliable internet connectivity, high-end computer equipment, up to date and stimulating educational materials, and teacher training to schools and learning centres in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

The project involved upgrading the hardware and software in 20 existing communications towers in the regions of Mandalay, Bago and Mon, bringing mobile-broadband internet for the first time to 31 schools.

To ensure that the network provided good connectivity to the schools, engineers installed software and a network of smaller repeater towers that would prioritise bandwidth to them during school hours. And, in the schools themselves, Ericsson installed multiple access points, similar to the wi-fi routers many people in the developed world have in their homes, to ensure a good wi-fi connection across the sites.

Connectivity, of course, is only part of the solution. Ericsson also supplied each school with internet-ready Android tablets and computers (partly funded by Qualcomm® through their Wireless Reach™ initiative) for use by students and teachers as well as projectors to use in the classroom and, for schools that were not connected to the electricity grid, solar panels. Myanmar was also one of the first countries in the world to implement virtual reality as a professional development tool for teachers. UNESCO delivered pedagogy-based teacher training and developed education material. “This programme successfully demonstrated how mobile technology can reach under-resourced and remote regions of the world where computers were previously not a viable reality,” says Angela Baker, senior director for corporate responsibility at Qualcomm. “But we know, that devices alone cannot help students see better learning outcomes. Results can only occur when technology, connectivity, effective teaching, and robust curriculum work in tandem.”

The effect was profound.

“I would say there was a real ‘wow’ effect,” says Ms Yermeche. “Many of the teachers I met when I visited the projects said they now felt like their peers in the city. We gave them two years of training on how to use the equipment in their teaching, but, even very early on in the project, they quickly became digitally capable. They were being innovative in how they used the tablets and the projectors and were quickly creating content for themselves. Some students and teachers even went on to compete in national ICT competitions and ranked highly.”

Not all of the people Connect To Learn helps live in areas with low internet connectivity. In India, cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai are home to millions of migrants who have moved from rural areas to find work. The cities generally have good mobile broadband coverage, but they are not resourced to provide migrants with education or healthcare, so many school age members of migrant families go straight into informal work.

“We found,” says Sakshi Muchate, Ericsson’s head of sustainability and corporate responsibility in New Delhi, “that a lot of children who might have had access to a government school in a village ended up dropping out of the school when they moved to cities. So we decided we needed to look at our education intervention and help these kids not just bridge that education gap but also support them in getting a more substantial job tomorrow.”

The immediate issue was that often a migrant family of four or five might have just one mobile phone between them. In response, in 2015, Connect To Learn, in partnership with the Smile Foundation, began to set up Ericsson Learning Centers, targeted at 18- to 25-year-olds, where students could study business and ICT skills that would enable them to move into the more formal jobs market. There are now 40 such centres across seven big Indian cities.

“We funded the Smile Foundation to set up these centres completely,” says Ms Muchate, “from buying the tables and chairs, to creating digital classrooms and an ICT lab with a projector and screen, to paying teachers’ salaries, rent and the electricity bill.”

As electricity in many Indian cities can be unreliable, the centres are fitted with uninterruptible power supplies; each centre has a trained IT manager to troubleshoot hardware problems; and the computers are loaded with a version of the Linux operating system that has been developed by Ericsson, which means that the centres can draw on Ericsson support if needed.

Ms Muchate stresses the importance of establishing what a group’s baseline IT competence is before buying equipment.

“My son, for example, is very quick to use an iPad,” she says. “but we are talking of students here whose parents haven’t ever seen a computer. So we decided to focus on standalone computers to help them learn the basics.”

One strength of the global reach of the Connect To Learn initiative is that lessons learned in places such as rural Myanmar or in big Indian cities can be translated to other regions to meet other needs.

In South Sudan, for example, Ericsson supported the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative to establish eight internet connected ICT learning centres where young people are learning how to use the internet to counter misinformation spread by partisan radio stations.

Internet connectivity can only deliver gains if it is affordable and all Connect To Learn projects are run as public-private initiatives, with Ericsson partnering not only with NGOs but also with government agencies and other companies such as mobile telecommunications providers.

“This has been crucial,” says Ms Yemerche, “to ensure that the projects are sustainable. Only by forming alliances with the key players in each region can we hope to make a long-term impact.”