MTN, Google lift UNN with wireless

MTN Nigeria and Google among others have lifted the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) with the commissioning of a jointly facilitated wireless infrastructure by President Goodluck Jonathan, at Ituku-Ozalla campus and Abah respectively.

Chief executive officer, MTN Nigeria, Ahmad Farroukh, said the facility is offering UNN the platform to provide first-rate e-learning services to students within and beyond the shores of the country.

He also said the infrastructure is an always-on, wired and wireless network that covers the entire geography of the four campuses of the university.

This consists of a fibre optics network provided by MTN, extending from Lagos to Nsukka and linking the four campuses of the institution in Enugu, Ituku- Ozalla Campus and Abah and carrying 50 mega bytes (MB) internet bandwidth traffic provided by Main One Cable.

According to him, the network offers Internet connectivity of 1-4mbps per 1000 students and staff, and has a central storage area network of at least 10-400 Terabytes on which students and faculty can store data.

“We are delighted to be part of this very ambitious project that is bound to positively project Nigeria to the rest of the world” he declared.

MTN he said, is convinced Nigeria has the human resources to lead the pursuit of knowledge in a wide array of fields.

“At MTN where 98 per cent of the staff strength are Nigerians, we see a strong demonstration of this fact. In the wider community, we also know that this capacity exists but for the paucity of requisite infrastructure. At MTN, we are committed to contributing our quota to efforts aimed at addressing this challenge and enabling Nigeria to take its deserved place in world reckoning” Mr. Farroukh said.

The Vice Chancellor (VC) University of Nigeria, Prof. Okolo in his remarks said “with the commissioning of this comprehensive ICT infrastructure, our students can stand up to any of their peers anywhere in the world. Not only this, with the platform that this network has availed us to provide real time e-learning services, we can virtually double the capacity of our classrooms and give more access to more Nigerians to acquire tertiary education through e-learning.”

He expressed appreciation to MTN, Google and other corporate bodies which all contributed to making the dream of the university come true.

“Without MTN, Main One, Google and all the other corporate bodies, we would not have been able to accomplish this. We owe you all a debt of gratitude,” he said.

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