"Not completing the network will seriously harm our competitiveness as a nation and violate our people's right to effectively access knowledge and benefit from its unlimited potential," Minister of Information and Communications Technology Bassem Roussan said on Monday.
The inability to finish the project will affect Jordanians' potential to enjoy greater access to content and applications that are made possible by the high bandwidth the network offers, he added, during the opening of the "International platform on integrating Arab e-infrastructure in a global environment" yesterday.
The minister noted that the potential for providing e-health, e-commerce, e-learning and gaming services will also be affected if the network is not completed.
The project started in 2003 with a view to connect all public schools and universities, and was expanded in 2007 to include government agencies, healthcare centres and hospitals.
Schools connected to the network will help provide residents of rural areas with access to the Internet once the project is completed, the minister said.
"To date, 35 per cent of the network has been completed at a cost of about $36 million. Work on the project was halted in 2008 as the Kingdom was hit hard by the global financial crisis," he said.
Stressing the importance of completing the project, Roussan said specialists in the country's hospitals can diagnose patients in rural areas remotely once the network is completed.
"Currently, we are exploring a number of options with the private sector to agree on a win-win arrangement that will see work on the network soon," he added.
Since the launch of the project in 2003, eight public universities have been connected to the network in addition to 219 schools, 65 public agencies and four healthcare centres in Amman, according to ministry figures.
In Aqaba, 49 schools and six knowledge stations were connected to the network, while across the Kingdom the figures stand at 346 schools and education departments, 17 knowledge stations, 33 public agencies and 73 healthcare institutions.
Once completed, the network seeks to increase the number of Jordanians with Internet access.
Internet penetration hit 45 per cent at the end of the third quarter of 2011, according to the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission.
The country's ICT strategy seeks to increase this figure to 50 per cent by the end of this year.
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Quelle/Source: Middle East North Africa Financial Network, 13.12.2011
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