Zero-rating online learning – Not as simple as it sounds

Recently published South African government regulations which call for telecommunication companies to provide free access to educational websites to support online teaching and learning are currently the subject of intense negotiation between mobile network operators and universities. How much room for manoeuvre do the regulations actually give service providers?

According to Duncan Greaves, CEO of the Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa (TENET) – which is part of the task team negotiating with the telecommunication companies and which is operating under the auspices of Universities South Africa – quite a lot.

Greaves said the wording of the regulations, issued in terms of the Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002, is open to some interpretation as far as it relates to zero-rating of data for higher education.

As they stand, the regulations say that “electronic communications service (ECS) licensees [which includes mobile network operators] must provide zero-rated access to local educational content websites”.

The problem of ‘the cloud’

Greaves said defining “local” in the “current age of cloud services” was proving to be most problematic.

“The term may aim at a level of reasonableness – international bandwidth is relatively expensive for South African network operators – but many universities have deployed content in cloud-based locations, which can be anywhere and everywhere,” he said.

Another difficulty is that many online learning platforms depend on video content and there is reluctance from mobile operators to support videos and streaming activities because they are “heavy on networks and have the potential to overwhelm particular cellular towers”.

“That’s understandable,” said Greaves. “But at the same time there are many faculties within universities that rely heavily on video content for demonstration purposes. Take health sciences, for example. And when it comes to TVET [technical and vocational education and training] colleges, how can you, for example, teach people to weld without video content?”

Another area open to some interpretation is how far zero-rated access should actually extend; in other words, how many zero-rated web addresses, or URLs, are in fact needed by universities.

Greaves said different telecommunication companies have made different offers to universities in this regard.

A question of numbers

“Telecommunication companies such as Vodacom, for example, made an initial offer to zero-rate three URLs per university. While it indicated that more than three can be negotiated, these URLs typically include the main corporate website, the main library and the university’s e-learning platform.”

However, Greaves said universities in South Africa find this restrictive because many of them do not have coherent e-learning platforms. “Different faculties have their own e-learning offerings and different faculties have different needs,” he said. (Vodacom subsequently said they would zero-rate three “journeys”, by which they meant related websites in these three areas.)

Others, such as Telkom, have offered to zero-rate all academic websites – anything within the ac.za domain.

Greaves said one of the principles already established in negotiations between the task team and telecommunications companies is that the choice of which educational websites to zero-rate must be made by universities themselves and, if necessary, should include more than three.

While many bilateral agreements are already in place between individual institutions and mobile networks, Greaves said intense technical negotiations are ongoing aimed at supporting online learning beyond the lockdown period which ends on 16 April and towards a proposed recommencement date for all academic programmes of 20 April. The possibility of an extended lockdown is strongly present to many in the sector.

TENET – Ahead of the curve

Greaves indicated that TENET itself has been working ahead of the curve as far as the fallout from the shutdown of higher education institutions is concerned.

TENET operates the South African National Research and Education Network (SANReN) under the terms of a collaboration agreement with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and provides internet and related services to more than 350 campuses of 85 institutions.

At a board meeting on 13 March, Greaves received a mandate from his board to begin negotiations with telecommunications companies to zero-rate educational websites. Those activities have since been absorbed into the work of the task team now operating under Universities South Africa.

Greaves said more than a week before the lockdown, TENET employees were working from home to ensure the availability and reliability of its services.

TENET has also doubled the availability of international bandwidth to support research in South African universities.

“While this extra capacity is available to all researchers in institutions across the sector, what we had in mind in particular is COVID-19-related research which often involves the movement of seriously large bioinformatic data and which requires lots of bandwidth. We’ve doubled international delivery for institutions and if anyone needs more, we’ll give it to them,” said Greaves.

He said as part of its remote learning support to universities, TENET was distributing Zoom licences free of charge to those who need them.

New link to South America

TENET has also been involved in opening a new path which connects South Africa to North America and South America for research and education purposes.

The project is the first South Atlantic research and education network crossing between three continents. The initial connection is sized at 100Gbps but can be upgraded as capacity per wavelength is improved, according to a TENET press release.

Greaves said the new path helps with “both bandwidth and redundancy – basically, it offers another path if something else fails” – and gives Africa direct access to Latin American research and academic networks instead of having to go all the way to London and New York before reaching South America.

Queries about the progress of negotiations over zero-rating directed at major mobile operators MTN, Vodacom, and Telkom were unanswered at the time of publication, although MTN has undertaken to provide more information in due course.

A statement from Cell C reads as follows: “There is a process in place which is coordinated by the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies on which sites to zero-rate. Requests received by Cell C on URLs needed for staff and students to conduct online learning, administration and other resources are reviewed based on this process, and the company executes what is feasible within the confines of predetermined criteria. Once completed, there will be an update on the lists of the institutions.”