The Impact of broadband on Global Access to Education

A new report titled – Technology, Broadband and Education: Advancing the Education for All Agenda – developed by the Broadband Commission for Digital Development highlights strategies for leveraging high-speed networks to realize the goal of providing education for all.

The report is the result of collaborative input from a large number of Commissioners and their organizations, including Alcatel-Lucent, the Connect-to-Learn partnership (The Earth Institute, Colombia University/Ericsson/Millennium Promise), Intel, the Inter-American Development Bank, Broadband Commissioners Suvi Lindén, Jasna Matić and Ivo Ivanovski, and Special Advisor to the Commission, Paul Budde. Broadband networks have the potential to radically alter the education landscape, creating new centers of learning in the developing world, extending access to distance learning programs to outlying communities, and helping poorer countries retain high-performing students who can help lift their nations out of poverty. Distance learning strategies can not only help nations educate children and adults living in remote communities, but broadband-based education programs could also become a source of income for those national higher education institutions that succeed in designing compelling, world class curriculums tailored to the needs of the billions living in the developing world.