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As the country nears year two of the novel coronavirus pandemic and over a year of virtual learning, three quarters of the public school population, or more than 600,000 students, are still being hampered by poor quality or no Internet service.Technology Minister Daryl Vaz told the House of Representatives yesterday that of the 980 public schools, more than 399 have poor Internet service and 220 are without access to the Internet mainly due to lack of communication infrastructure in the communities where the schools are located."The harsh reality is that time has caught up with us because of our collective failure to make sustained and strategic investments in the country's fibre-optic cable infrastructure that would have allowed us to meet the demand of a digitally enabled school system, with or without COVID-19," he stated.However, he assured that the Government has a three-tier plan for schools and 48 places of safety that will address the issue."We are no longer going to allow each connected school to negotiate individually with service providers. Instead, schools are grouped based on their enrolment and bandwidth requirements, and service providers are required to create a private data network for each group," he said.This means schools won't have to pay the hefty Internet bills they have been burdened with over the months. He noted that one popular Kingston high school had been paying bills of up to US$5,000 monthly.Vaz explained that each cluster of schools will be connected to the Government's Internet backbone, with access to the Internet and data services."This type of network service gives the Government the ability to share a single source of Internet to the various groups of schools and eliminates the need to manage over 900 individual Internet service contracts, providing instead for a single Internet service contract for all schools," he said.This approach will also give the Government the ability to monitor the performance of each school Internet service in real time, and centrally filter content to ensure that students are not exposed to illicit and inappropriate material, Vaz said.Public schools with enrolment between 100 and 400 will fall under tier one. Six hundred and sixty-one schools are currently part of this tender for connectivity, which is now out for local Internet service providers to provide wide area network service. Some 66,735 students are expected to benefit.Tier two includes schools in rural and deep rural communities with enrolment of up to 400 students. Four hundred and eighty schools are a part of this tender and more than 54,395 students are expected to have connectivity.Schools with 500 to 2,000 students which are having the greatest difficulties in accessing quality Internet service and represent the largest segment of the student population will be grouped in the third tier, and will be connected directly to the Government's Internet network.Vaz said 244 of these schools, with a combined population of 77,391 students, have been identified islandwide.