Unilorin Signs on to Glo Infrastructure for its Data

The University of Ilorin (Unilorin) is exploring a technical partnership with the biggest home-grown telecommunications network, Globacom, to place the University’s curriculum and academic work on the network’s telecommunications infrastructure.

This gesture will take education in Nigeria to a higher level as students will be able to access their lectures and lecturers from anywhere in the world.

The platform will be accessed through students’ hand-held devices or computers. The plan to revolutionise the classroom experience of Nigerian university students will ride on Globacom’s vast and modern voice and data technology.

This was the fallout of a visit to the Mike Adenuga Towers, Globacom’s corporate headquarters by Principal Officers of the University led by the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Abdulganiyu Ambali recently.

Discussing with top management of the telecoms firm during the visit, Ambali rated Globacom as the number one telecommunications service provider in the country with the capacity to deliver end-to-end solutions for every sector of the economy.

He said that Globacom had changed the face of the telecoms industry in Nigeria with its huge investments in technology.

Globacom is the official telecoms partner of the University of Ilorin, providing direct and exclusive internet connection to the whole university community.  Ambali applauded the existing relationship the institution already has with the company and requested that the relationship be upgraded to meet the demands of teaching in the internet age.

Receiving the delegation, Mr. Prabhat Aggarwal, Globacom’s chief commercial director,  explained that the telecoms company has the richest experience in providing integrated telecommunication services to organisations in the country.

According to him, Globacom is the official telecoms carrier for most of the leading firms in Nigeria including the oil and gas sector, banking, manufacturing, food and beverage sectors as well as government establishments.

“With this track record and given our wide network running on microwave infrastructure, optic fiber rings and the Glo  1 submarine cable,  it will not be difficult to provide integrated voice and data services to your community for academic, administration and  security purposes,”  Aggarwal told the University of Ilorin Vice Chancellor and his team.

The university’s delegation included Prof Olugbenga Mokuolu, head Of Consultancy Services, Dr. Jeleel Ojuade, Director of ICT,  and Prof. Ahmed Musa, acting director, Advancement Centre.

Globacom explained to the team that the company already has an electronic learning (eLearning)  template that can put all faculty curriculum, lecture notes and cached teaching sessions for up to 5 years on the intranet or internet for the academic community to access at will and from anywhere.

This is in addition to video streaming, local intranet and extranet, web-based learning plus teleconferencing facilities which can make a live connection between students in a class and a lecturer from anywhere in the world.

Globacom offered to also provide the University of Ilorin community with internal communication solutions including Closed User Group (CUG), fixed wireless connections and Bucket GPRS services which provides bulk data bundle for the entire community and PABX connections.

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