The company building the network, Coatl, will connect an initial 218 rural schools that will provide broadband services to 54,000 students.
The country’s education minister, Carla Hananía de Varela (pictured), wants to connect all 1.2 million students within El Salvador’s public education system.
Coatl is using open network architecture, working with Nokia to build a wholesale network that will operate at 100Gbps, using a combination of fibre, microwave and TV white space radio base stations.
Nokia and Coatl are working with a California company, Caban Systems, which will provide lithium-ion energy storage battery in 50 sites to support the deployment of reliable internet connectivity for the country’s coastal communities. Uwe Martinz, president and CEO of Coatl, said the project will “evolve towards solar solutions”.
Caban’s hardware and software will provide standalone or backup power on any site.
Coatl said its wholesale business model will provide network security with end-to-end data encryption over its 100Gbps capacity transport layer.
