The installations were the first steps in a nationwide virtual education initiative aimed at broadening educational opportunities and Internet-based learning programs throughout Colombia.

In the coming months, the university plans to install up to 30 Intellicom Skypops at UPTC locations throughout the state of Boyaca and across eastern Colombia, including Casanare, Cundinimarca and Arauca.

In addition, most of these installations will also include two to three Inivislink wireless networking solutions that will enable the university to distribute up to 11Mbps throughput to buildings across campuses and to outlying locations-up to distances of 25 kilometers.

According to the national initiative, it is expected that as many as 250 Skypops will be installed across Colombia by 2004. Intellicom will provide full support for the systems through its Network Operations Center.

"Intellicom has made a firm commitment to deliver high-speed Internet access to educational institutions worldwide. This alliance with UPTC helps us to advance our goals by extending new opportunities for education on campus and to outlying areas throughout Colombia," said Carol Sorrick-Highton, president of Intellicom.

"By providing cost-effective, turnkey solutions that are configured specifically for educational systems, Intellicom makes it possible for organizations in even the most remote geographies to leverage the power of the Internet to enhance the quality of education. We're delighted to be working with UPTC on this project."

"Even in this early stage of deployment, we are seeing the tremendous benefits of Intellicom's Skypop systems," said Olmedo Vargas, president of the Universidad Pedagogica Y Tecnologica de Colombia.

"We have already begun to make full use of the systems' videoconferencing and distance learning capabilities, and we're looking forward to rolling out broadband Internet access to the rest of our campuses.

"With our Virtual University and Virtual Library initiatives, we expect that large segments of the Colombian population will soon see the benefits of broadband Internet access."

Once the multi-campus installation is complete, UPTC will have in place a number of online educational and community initiatives for its more than 18,000 students. The university will support numerous distance learning programs, both for full-time students on campus and part-time students.

The university also has plans to create a virtual private network (VPN) for internal administrative purposes. In addition, there are plans to lease bandwidth to private businesses and residents in areas surrounding the Skypop installations in order to subsidize the costs of network maintenance.

Skypop is a complete turnkey system that delivers reliable, affordable Internet service for remote geographical locations that, like many communities in Colombia, are not currently served or are underserved by traditional landline-based data communication systems.

Intellicom's Skypop delivers Internet gateway service that provides one-hop access to the U.S. Internet backbone. Intellicom's advanced system circumvents the high cost and long deployment times generally associated with leased high-speed local telephone lines, providing efficient two-way Internet access at significant cost savings to the end user.

This makes Intellicom a viable solution for providing state-of-the-art Internet and Intranet capabilities to educational institutions and remotely located business throughout the western hemisphere.

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