News by EENet

On 14th February 2013, Jaak Aaviksoo, the Estonian Minister of Education and Research, signed a directive No. 80, about decommissioning the administered state agency - Estonian Education and Research Network (EENet). To restructure the field of information and communication and develop a unified body, the assets and functions of EENet as a whole will be handed over to the Estonian Information Technology Foundation (EITF) from 15 April 2013. With the further addition of the Tiger Leap Foundation, originally an education-related IT project, the EITF will become a competence centre that contributes to increasing the quality of teaching and promoting ICT education at all educational levels. EITF was established by the Republic of Estonia, University of Tartu, Tallinn Technical University, Eesti Telekom and the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications and has the task of preparing IT specialists, as well as supporting educational activities in the field of information and communication technologies.

In the beginning of its nearly 20-year history, EENet was the first Internet service provider in Estonia. In 1993 when Paul-Erik Rummo, the Minister of Education and Culture founded EENet, one could put an equal sign between the words 'Internet' and 'EENet'. The University of Tartu and the daily newspaper ‘Postimees’ were among the first users of EENet. Over the years, the EENet staff helped to launch the Tiger Leap project and the research computing programme Estonian Grid. There is no doubt that EENet, being the first Internet populariser and promoter was a significant contribution to the development of Estonia as an IT-state. In the beginning of 2013, EENet services were used by 1086 organisations with an estimated 220 thousand Internet users. Today's speed of the EENet basic network is Nx10Gbps.

Being EENet director, I would like to thank all the agencies who have been loyal using our services for decades. I would like to thank all the good partners in Estonia and abroad, thanks to whom we have been able to provide specified services to research and to educational and cultural institutions. Finally, I would like to say a big thank you to all my former and present colleagues who have enthusiastically and selflessly done a lot of work so that the best possible connectivity would always be available at Estonain institutes, schools, libraries and other institutions of research, education and culture.

I hope that after this reform, the IT infrastructure of Estonian research and education will develop yet more vigorously than before.

Mihkel Kraav
Director of EENet