In 2004, India took an unprecedented step in space by launching EDUSAT
- aka GSAT-3 - the world's first satellite dedicated entirely to
expanding educational opportunities and programs nationwide.
Satellite-based distance education had been in full swing worldwide for
more than a decade, but despite many attempts to propel this phenomenon
to the next level, India alone went ahead and set the bar at a new
height.
The magnitude of this event was immediately evident to the satellite
industry at large. While EDUSAT certainly encountered its share of
challenges and had its moments of performance anxiety along the way,
the mission moved steadily forward until last year.
GSAT-12 which was launched in mid-July as a replacement for INSAT 3B
satellite has been described as a satellite that will support
telemedicine, distance education, and other services for rural
communities, and yet it is GSAT-14 that is often described as the
actual replacement for EDUSAT. GSAT-14's launch in 2012 will be closely
watched indeed as it will again bring India's domestically developed
cryogenic engine into the spotlight following a launch failure
involving this specific rocket engine in 2010.
Anand Parthasarathy, Bangalore-based Editor of IndiaTechOnline.com
(http://www.indiatechonline.com) has followed EDUSAT closely over the
years.
"The original EDUSAT was in the Indian context, an idea ahead of its
time -- while the idea of a satellite dedicated to educational apps was
great in principle, it did not dovetail with terrestrial programmes to
harness the satellite," said Parthasarathy. "As a result, almost half
the useful life of the satellite was frittered away without any serious
programming effort by individual states in India."
Parthasarathy credits the Virtual Classroom Technology on Edusat for
Rural Schools (ViCTERS) channel in Kerala which was overseen by the
IT@School Department as "one of the few statewide distance educational
schemes that harnessed EDUSAT effectively." And thanks to the lessons
learned over the course of EDUSAT's lifetime, he is confident that
GSAT-12 will be better utilized.
"Telemedicine is widely seen as the next big thing in India to reach
out with technology to the rural 'unconnected' and GSAT-12 certainly
is both timely and appropriate for this application," said
Parthasarathy.
"I am not fully briefed on the details of what GSAT-12 is expected to
do -- but I would only caution that public interest projects like
these must be clearly separated from ISRO's techno - commercial
ventures. When EDUSAT stopped functioning, the educational programming
was shifted to INSAT 1c where it had to compete for transponders
with paying customers of ISRO," said Parthasarathy. "In the absence
of QoS commitments for the educational and not for profit work of
ISRO on par with what they need to adhere to with their commercial
customers, I believe the educational feeds suffered for weeks on end
with breaks in the link -- something unthinkable for paying clients."
The bottom line, according to Parthasarathy is that "ISRO should not be in a position of having to sacrifice its educational commitments at any time
for commercial reasons. (ISRO) must put in safeguards to make sure this never happens with (GSAT-12) or any future satellite which is primarily meant for public service."
Parthasarathy's advice in this case applies both to ISRO and its
non-profit arm for societal initiatives, the Ahmedabad-based
Development and Educational Communications Unit (DECU), which
Parthasarathy has accused in the past of disappointing millions of
Indian students and falling well short of their responsibility to
enable an support satellite-based distance education. He points
specifically to an incident in which thousands of virtual classrooms -
in both schools an universities - were left in the dark for at least a
month in Andhra Pradesh, Assam Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka and Kerala.
This unannounced shutdown affected thousands of institutions, including
numerous engineering colleges in Karnataka and more than 10,000 schools
and 6 million students in Kerala.
This satellite signal blackout is relevant here because regardless of
whether or not ISRO attributed it to interference issues with INSAT –
4CR - a replacement platform used after EDUSAT suddenly expired in
November, 2010 - the failure to explain what was happening quickly to
local network administrators was questionable at best given the magnitude of the disruption.
Parthasarathy accused ISRO and DECU of favoritism because commercial
customers were granted preferential treatment at the expense of millions of students who depended upon EDUSAT in the process.
By the way, Parthasarathy developed programming to compliment ViCTERS
in the form of a weekly show for students and families called “IT For
All”, which was augmented by IndiaTechOnline web content. Hence his
frustration and even anger with the way in which ISRO and DECU handled
the collapse of EDUSAT services.
One legacy of EDUSAT might be the granting of - and enforcement of - a
formal service level agreement with respect to rural telemedicine and
distance education services going forward.
Another legacy of EDUSAT might be better efforts to ensure sustained
and adequate redundancy in the future. For example, Kerala’s educators
had created a special website which carried ViCTERS as a live video
stream (http://www.victers.itschool.gov.in ). Still, thousands of students
with no access to Internet services were left in the dark.
Finally, what is lacking thus far is a formal assessment of EDUSAT
including any "lessons learned" as well as important insights into
planning and operations. Such a document would be not only valuable for
India's sake, but for other countries as well which might be
considering their own satellite-based distance education networks.
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