Vodafone Ghana V-LINK phone booths, deployed in more than 400 senior high schools (SHS), holds the key to the telecommunication link for students who have been banned by the Ghana Education Service (GES) to use mobile phones on campus. Mr Patrick Otieku-Boadu, Project Manager of V-Link at Vodafone Ghana, said in a statement issued in Accra that 1,500 phone booths have been rolled out in 413 schools as part of a grand agenda to ensure that students and their parents, guardians and loved ones are able to communicate without any hindrance. He said the V-Link would also control the manner the students would communicate without affecting their studies. He explained that this solves the problem that the GES seeks to solve with the order to SHS heads to seize students who flout the ban on the use of mobile phones. Mr Otieku-Boadu said the phone booths are solar paneled while the GSM device would enable students to send and receive text messages. "It has the added feature of benefiting from all the promotions that Vodafone runs on its network on regular mobile phones," he said. About 400 more phones are to be fixed in the next few months as a means of meeting the high demand for the booths in other SHS's. The V-LINK Project manager said Vodafone has always been part of this important national project and will work to support the vision of the GES while providing a more regulated means of telecommunications solution to students. Vodafone introduced its V-Link phone booths as a new concept to replace the former GT pay-phones which faced low patronage in the late 1990's. The V-Link functions just like a mobile phone. It uses SIM cards and allows patrons to send and receive text messages, apart from making and receiving calls. It is a solar-based technology as well. A remarkable aspect of the V-Link, according to the Head of Corporate Communications, Mr. Isaac Cudjoe, is the fact that a number of students are benefiting from the facility. "For instance, students of the Akropong School for the blind are benefiting from the V-Link booths installed in the school and are now able to connect with their parents and guardians, regularly, to make their academic concerns know to them." Source: GNA