School Bells Ring In The Amazon Via Satellites
W. David Gardner

There are 10,000 middle-school-aged students in the Brazilian state of Amazonas ready and willing to learn and attend school, but the lack of serviceable roads makes school attendance next to impossible. Until now, that is. Hughes Network Systems announced Wednesday that it has completed the rollout of its broadband satellite service that brings distance learning to the 10,000 students scattered in rural communities in the region. Here's how it works. Teachers of different disciplines present their classes in the Educational Media Center of Amazonas in Manaus at a State Education Board facility. The classes are then transmitted in real time to a Hughes network operations center and broadcast to rural communities via two-way satellite links. Students, who are assisted by 260 on-site teachers, can communicate with teachers in Manaus. "We are able to overcome the obstacle of geography and deliver distance education to students wherever they live," said Delio Morais, president of Hughes Network Systems Americas, in a statement. "The greatest challenge for Hughes was in accessing the rural communities in Amazonas to install the satellite equipment." More than 200 Hughes HN terminals have been set up in the communities under the auspices of the Amazonas Board of Education's On-Site Middle School with Technology Mediation project. Each classroom is equipped with Hughes terminal, multimedia PC, LCD TV, laser printer, and -- to combat the frequent power outages in the region -- a special battery. Distance learning has been catching on in Brazil in recent years; in 2005, for instance, more than 500,000 students were enrolled in distance learning programs in Brazil. In another development, Hughes announced this week that its Brazilian subsidiary has implemented the region's first broadband standard DVB-S2/IPoS satellite hub. Brazilian company executives said they are confident the firm will have more than 1,500 customer sites by the end of the year.