Teachers in some of the schools in Trashiyangtse have to stay late after school hours so that they can have access to average Internet speed.

With a bandwidth subscription of 1Mbps, slow Internet speed is one of the major challenges faced by teachers at the Bumdeling lower secondary school.

The school principal, Ranbir Tamang, said that the school had written to the ministry to increase the bandwidth from 1Mbps to 2Mbps in October last year. “We took the issue to the dzongkhag telecom office but the connectivity has not improved.”

He said that it was more difficult without a 3G connection in the area. “Teachers use the Internet to download teaching materials, access mail and news but at this speed, it takes hours to even open a mail.”

A senior manager with Bhutan Telecom in Trashiyangtse, Gembo Tshering, said that slow Internet issue is because of the limited bandwidth subscription the schools have. “We wrote a letter in February to all the schools asking them to increase their bandwidth capacity since the majority of them had limited bandwidth subscription,” he said. “Only one school submitted a letter of acceptance.”

He said that the problem at Bumdeling LSS was also because of the low bandwidth capacity. “After a thorough inspection of the connection at the school, we didn’t find any issues with our connection.”

He said the available bandwidth was inadequate to provide a decent Internet speed since there are more users in the school.

While the company awaits approval from the dzongkhag education sector to expand the bandwidth capacity at various schools, the manager said that beginning next month Bumdeling would be connected with 3G service.

Meanwhile, the chief dzongkhag education officer, Kinzang Dendup, said that the education sector would propose to the dzongkhag to help increase bandwidth capacity at various schools in the dzongkhag. “Internet play an important role in teaching. To motivate and make our teachers proficient, the internet is crucial.”

He said that Bhutan Telecom has proposed to expand the bandwidth capacities at nine schools in Trashiyangtse. Of the nine proposed schools, Bayling and Tshenkharla central schools have a current bandwidth capacity of more than 2Mbps.

The proposal came after the Bhutan Telecom conducted a tariff and system monitoring of the Internet speed in the schools. The inspection found that the bandwidth subscriptions in most of the schools were fully occupied.

Younten Tshedup | Trashiyangtse