The General Teaching Council for England, which has 500,000
registered teachers, has deployed a high speed circuit switched
data (HSCSD) solution for its mobile workers to cut costs and
increase efficiency.
GTC staff travel around the country extensively to help shape
teaching standards and education policy. They often stay in hotels
and have to remotely file reports and keep on top of their e-mail,
and many of them found that traditional hotel room connections were
unreliable and costly.
The HSCSD system deployed is used over the Orange network and
gives GTC staff in the field a 30 kbps connection to the internet
via mobile data cards that slot into employees' laptops.
Initially, 20 staff have been equipped with the HSCSD cards, and
the GTC says its staff is more productive as a result. Andrew Hill,
GTC ICT manager, said: "By using the mobile data cards, our
employees have greater flexibility as to when and where they
work.
"The cards have significantly reduced the length of time it
takes for staff to securely access corporate information and
e-mail, thus call costs have been reduced."
HSCSD works over GSM networks and the data rates are guaranteed
as a result of allocated frequency channels provided on the mobile
network to HSCSD users.
This article was part of Computer Weekly's enterprise mobile
business channel, sponsored by Nokia