55 of 121 projects of Rs. 2 bln completed to promote ICT in remote areas

ISLAMABAD, Oct 22 (APP): National ICT R&D Fund on Saturday announced that out of 121 approved projects worth Rs. 2 billion 55 have been completed to ensure telecom services in far-flung areas of the country.
Of the total 30 projects are nearing completion, 21 projects are still on-going while another 15 are yet to enter development phase, a senior official at National ICT R&D Fund, a Department of Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT) said on Saturday.
Highlighting the achievements, the official said scholarships worth Rs. 4.4 billion have been offered under different programmes so far.
Furthermore 49,326 students, 3,566 teachers were trained along side 4,761 scholarships were offered to students from 29 universities across Pakistan.
The official said 70 students who secured top positions at their universities and 10 different projects received awards in various Information and Communication Technology (ICT) competitions.
Regarding Technical R&D projects the official said these include design and implementation of a prototype for a secure billing framework with real time detection of malicious end node connections (UET, Peshawar), Multimodel sensing enabled real-time intelligent wireless camera networks for secure spaces (UET, Lahore) and Arrhythmia and sudden death syndrome detection hybrid network based telemedicine system (CASE, Islamabad).
The other such projects are Integrated scholastic learning system (Knowledge Platform, Islamabad), Development of a tele-surgical training robot and simulator (SEECS-NUST, Islamabad), Safety assurance in high stress environments (SEECS-NUST, Islamabad) and Real time automated broadcast monitoring and information exploitation system (TechArete, Islamabad).
The official said an ICT entrepreneurship development platform “National Incubation Center” and outsourced to a professional management team with an objective to accelerate the growth and success of ICT entrepreneurship.
This has been established at allocated space of about 18,000 square feet at National Information Technology Board (NITB) building, Islamabad with capacity of 40 incubatee teams per annum.