All educational institutions in India having Satellite Interactive Terminals (SITs) or Receive Only Terminals (ROTs) can now receive educational programmes from EDUSAT, the first Indian satellite built exclusively for serving the educational sector.
Curriculum-based education is being imparted via the satellite by the University Grants Commission (UGC) through the Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC). The institutions can also interact and ask questions through audio-video conferencing or text mode or through telephone. All states and Union territories had earlier committed to sign memorandums of understanding with the ISRO and the Human Resource Development within the next two months. Only 14 states and union territories are so far using the satellite. EDUSAT has several new technologies. It carries five Ku-band transponders providing spot beams, one Ku-band transponder providing a national beam and six Extended C-band transponders with national coverage beam. It will join the INSAT system that already has more than 130 transponders in C-band, Extended C-band and Ku-band providing a variety of telecommunication and television services. The infrastructure of EDUSAT is being utilized by Indira Gandhi National Open University -(IGNOU) for curriculum-based education, teachers' training, professional educational courses and for conducting teleconferencing sessions for software content generation. National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) also conducts inter-active orientation/training programmes of teachers and teachers' educators. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) utilizes EDUSAT network for group discussion, lectures, demonstrations, video-shows, training and capacity building programmes.
