The Diplomat
The Honduran Minister of Education, Arnaldo Bueso, and the Spanish Ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Guillermo Kirkpatrick, visited this week a school in the municipality of Las Lajas, in Comayagua, to inaugurate the connectivity and tele-education service to 15 schools and rural communities in this Central American country.
The service has been put into operation thanks to the collaboration between the AECID office in Honduras and the company Hispasat, a Spanish satellite telecommunications operator belonging to the Red Eléctrica Group.
This transfer, agreed by the Honduran Ministry of Public Education, has been carried out within the framework of the humanitarian aid that Spain has been allocating, through the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), to the Central American country to alleviate the devastation caused in late 2020 by hurricanes Eta and Iota.
Specifically, this humanitarian action has provided all the necessary equipment for the deployment of 15 satellite WiFi points located in different departments of the country, as well as a tele-education solution that allows downloading and training content on local servers so that students can access them efficiently.
The solution deployed provides the school with a WiFi network and also includes a community WiFi hotspot, which provides Internet access to the population of these rural communities. The project includes the installation and maintenance costs of this service, which will last for nine months.
The devastation caused by hurricanes Eta and Iota affected 40% of the population of Honduras, led to the evacuation of half a million people and left 330,000 people isolated and half of the students without internet connection.
In disaster scenarios such as this, satellite technology is a key tool to speed up the restoration of communications. Moreover, its use is essential for training in digital tools and skills in countries such as Honduras, where rural schools often lack internet access via terrestrial or mobile networks.
“Hurricanes Eta and Iota caused unprecedented damage to a large number of schools in Honduras. That is why we are grateful to Hispasat for donating this connectivity service aimed at alleviating the effects of this catastrophe on the education of young people, and we value the role of Spanish Cooperation in Honduras,” said Ambassador Guillermo Kirkpatrick during the inauguration.
“At Hispasat we are fully committed to the role that the satellite has to play in situations such as the one experienced in Honduras. But we do not want this connectivity solution to be aimed only at restoring communications to these 15 schools, but also to contribute to the effective reduction of the digital divide in a basic service such as education,” added the CEO of the telecommunications company, Miguel Ángel Panduro.
Several Spanish companies are working with Cooperación Española on various initiatives to provide satellite connectivity to schools and rural communities in Latin America, thus promoting quality education in remote and disadvantaged areas.
