KARACHI, March 23: The Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) connected 85 universities through high speed internet as a joint venture with the Higher Education Commission (HEC). This facility would be provided to another 49 universities on fulfilment of requirements by the institutions.

A PTCL spokesman said that facilities were being provided under the Resource Develo-pment Programme (RDP) of the HEC in order to increase the interaction of Pakistani academics, students and intelligentsia with peers across the globe and to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, learning and innovation.

He said that this initiative would enable Pakistani students and professors to engage and interact with the world in areas of advanced knowledge pertaining to medicines, information technology, biomedical, biophysics, latest resource development and telemedicine in addition to the world of arts and literature.

He said that as part of this initiative PTCL would ensure provision of redundancies of the internet and intranet of the university network and deploy a converged solution involving wireless and wire-line technology.