IIJ won a bid for a Project for Educational Information Network "CABINET" from Chiba City Board of Education

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TOKYO - October 16, 2023 - Internet Initiative Japan Inc. (TSE Prime: 3774), one of Japan's leading Internet access and comprehensive network solutions providers, won a bid for a project for education information network "CABINET" which is used by all 168 public schools (as of FY2023, including elementary, middle, secondary, and special needs schools) in Chiba city on September 1, 2023. This project aims to renew educational network as well as school administrative network and system that comprise the CABINET. The project includes the construction of virtualized platform for educational and administrative systems as well as migration of systems at a new data center, 300Gbps bandwidth-guaranteed Internet connectivity from a data center, WAN to connect locations such as schools and a data center through 1 to 3Gbps, delivery of more than 7,700 network equipment to schools and other location, operation and maintenance of all of the provided services, and a procurement of a help desk. Through this comprehensive provision of ICT environment, we contribute to realize sophisticated education information for Chiba city’s schools. Furthermore, provision of 300Gbps bandwidth-guaranteed Internet connectivity service is one of the largest ever contracts for a single organization, excluding network operators.

From the 1990s, the Chiba City Board of Education has been implementing educational information network "CABINET" to advance information education and promote improvement of productivity of school administrative through ICT. The city has been progressive in bringing ICT environment as seen in a case where PCs (personal computer) were provided to all teachers, staffs and students of the city's special needs elementary and middle schools to construct large scale Thin Client system in 2011. These days, due to a rapid increase in cloud-based learning contents and use of online meetings, there have been cases of poor communication caused by the lack and delay of network capacity and speed. Moreover, because the city plans to execute educational policies such as active learning (*) utilizing ICT, introduction of digital textbooks, full-scale adoption of CBT (Computer Based Testing: form of exam using computers）which require highly reliable connectivity, the procurement of highly reliable network environment with no bandwidth shortage or latency has been a crucial challenge.

• (*)Active learning: a general term for describing a form of learning activity which is promoted by the Ministry of Education, Sports, Culture, Science and Technology of Japan. Active learning is different from the one-way lecturing format by teachers. It is designed so that children and students are encouraged to actively learn by involving involves group work and debate which are designed to encourage.

Under this CABINET project, network will be constructed by connecting all 168 locations of mainly schools through total of 271 bandwidth-guaranteed WAN lines which are ranging from 1 to 3Gbps to IIJ's data center campus from which 300Gbps bandwidth-guaranteed Internet will be provided. This design ensures highly reliable Internet connectivity environment compared to the local break out method in which each location is connected directly to ISP by allowing clients themselves to flexibly manage bandwidth. At the data center, authentication infrastructure, communication infrastructure for education and school administrative systems, and security infrastructure will be constructed to protect children and students from threats from Internet and also to safely manage highly confidential data used in learning and school affairs.

Details about the Bid

Name of project	Services of the 3rd version of Chiba City’s educational information network
Details of project	Construction and operation of Chiba City Board of Education’s 3rd version of CABINET system
Period of project	Initial project period: from October 2023 to December 2024 Operation period: from January 2025 to December 2029
Co-sponsor	Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation
Contracted amount (including tax)	JPY13,524,940,000

Image of the project

IIJ shall continue to provide highly reliable network environment where educational institutions can use Internet comfortably and securely use Internet

The statements within this release contain forward-looking statements about our future plans that involve risk and uncertainty. These statements may differ materially from actual future events or results.

For inquiries, contact

IIJ Corporate Communications

• +81-3-5205-6310
• +81-3-5205-6377
• press@iij.ad.jp

• (*) All company names and service names used in this press release are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.