Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Campuses Going Wireless

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 18:27:36 -0500

http://cnniw.yellowbrix.com/pages/cnniw/Story.nsp?story_id=34275124&ID=cnniw&scategory=Telecommunications%3AWireless&

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Campuses Going Wireless

Source: Arkansas Business

Publication date: 2002-10-28

Arrival time: 2002-11-11

WHEN DAVID KONECNY, A junior at the University of Arkansas at
Little Rock, wants to review a lecture from class or check his
email, he simply switches on his laptop at the school's student
union, the library or an outdoor courtyard on campus.

Within seconds, the information science major from west Little
Rock is logged onto the UALR network - no wires, no plugs, no mess.

"It's great for me because I can download a professor's entire
PowerPoint Presentation while in class and then review it later at
another spot on campus," said Konecny.

"The wireless feature makes it easier to do a lot of things, like
note taking and even taking tests online."

Konecny is among hundreds of students in Arkansas colleges who
are taking advantage of-campus-based wireless networks that allow
access to the Internet and university networks without wires or
cables.

Instead of being plugged in physically, data is beamed via radio
waves to computers, enabling students and faculty to log on wherever
a relay signal is available - in UALR's case, from the fountain
outside the student union to a classroom in the engineering
building.

Even UALR's baseball coaches use their laptops during games
because Curran Conway Field is configured for wireless.

UALR adopted wireless two years ago, when the technology was
relatively new. "We were the first school in the state to deploy
wireless," said Jeannie Winston, UALR's head of computing services.

The school first launched its wireless system at the Donaghey
Student Center, where it was so well received that Winston and her
crew gradually equipped 11 other buildings with the system, as the
need and budget dictated. The next building to go wireless will be
the new 83,375-SF Donald W. Reynolds Center for Business and
Economic Development when it opens in the next couple of months.

"The entire budding will be wireless," Winston said. "After that,
we'll still have six buildings that won't have wireless capacity."

Wireless technology, is becoming more commonplace at colleges and
universities nationally, where schools are outfitting classrooms,
libraries, dorms student unions and other common areas with the
necessary equipment. "It was thought of as revolutionary a few years
ago, but it's pretty much in use on a lot of campuses now," Winston
said.

Driving the trend is a recent clip 'in the cost of the networking
equipment as well as a high level of student sophistication and
expectation regarding wireless equipment, like cell phones, laptops
and handheld computers.

Schools that already have an extensive wired infrastructure find
it easier to add wireless, Winston said. In many cases it's actually
less expensive to add wireless connectivity to a building than to
add new wires for students to plug in their computers.

"Going wireless can be very expensive if you have to start from
zero," she said. "But the expense was not that great for UALR
because we already had in place pretty much everything we needed."

The term wireless is somewhat misleading, Winston said, because a
wired network has to exist in order to deploy a wireless system.
Once a wired network is in place, all that's needed for wireless
service is a series of wireless access points, or WAPs. These are
small boxes that act as transmitters/receivers between the wired
network and the student's computer.

Each WAP can connect users up to 300 feet away.

Inside UALR's Cyber Cafe in the Donaghey Student Center, the WAP
mounted on the ceding looks like an oversized smoke detector. UALR's
cost for the 53 WAPs it has installed across campus was about
$41,600, including installation and ownership rights. Plans are to
add 18 more to the Reynolds Center at a cost of $14,400.

To make the laptops receive signals, a special card is slipped
into a port on the computer. These cards sell for $60-$80 in the
campus bookstore and computer stores. Once the card is installed, it
acts as an antenna that sends and receives radio signals to and from
the WAPs.

Many new laptops are already fitted with wireless components that
make the cards unnecessary, but that also makes the laptops more
expensive. Given the relatively high cost ($800 and up) of even non-
wireless laptops, most UALR students have not joined the, wireless
craze. Out of 11,000 UALR students enrolled in fall semester, only
about 200 have signed up for access to the wireless network.

Other Connected Schools

In 1998, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff began
renovating existing buildings and constructing new ones on campus.

Chancellor Lawrence Davis looked at this as a good time to
upgrade the campus's networking infrastructure as well. Instead of
having separate system for voice and data, Davis wanted a network
that would combine voice, data and video communications.

After spending $8.2 million, the school ended up with a
sophisticated integrated system of fiber optics and wireless
technology that allows land line telephones, cell phones, computers
and video services to share a single campus network.

"We don't have every building on campus connected yet, but the
system is not fully deployed," Davis said. "When it is, each student
will have connectivity to the Internet and television, as well as
wireless.

Davis did not say how much of the $8.2 million was devoted to
wireless but said the entire university was blanketed with a
wireless network for cell phone use. Right now only phones work off
the wireless system; they don't commingle on the same lines with the
Internet and wide area network users.

The phones work over an Internet-based local area network, as
opposed to the usual circuit-switched network. The system has
already saved a lot money for the school. The university is now
paying $6,000 a month for phone service - with no additional costs
for moves, adds and changes - as opposed to the $25,000 or more a
month it paid before.

Davis said plans are in the works for the university system to
eventually connect with the city of Pine Bluff. "Because we have a
student housing shortage, we need to have the broad perimeter of
campus connected," he said. "In addition, the city of Pine Bluff has
shown interest in contracting with us to connect to City Hall."

Like UAPB, Arkansas State University wants to turn its campuses
wireless to handle voice, as well as data and Internet access.

"We think our wireless development is going to be important
because students coming in now are accustomed to working in a
wireless environment - 99 percent of them have cell phones in their
pockets," said ASU President Les Wyatt.

Wyatt thinks of ASU's wireless capacity as an "umbrella with a
two-mile sphere" that covers the campus like a dome. He expects the
campus to be fully wireless within the next year or so.

Wyatt declined to put a dollar figure on the cost of going
wireless, but he did say that students pay a $9 per credit hour
technology fee that is projected to generate about $2.2 million
yearly. The fee was established last year to pay for new technology -
including wireless Internet service, a computer lab and software -
at the Jonesboro campus.

On Sept. 6 however, ASU trustees approved a plan to shift $2 of
those fees to the general budget. Citing a revenue shortfall due to
state cuts in funding, trustees said that the transfer of money to
the general budget would replace $489,000.

The University of Arkansas' main campus at Fayetteville also
charges students a technology fee, but the school's general fund
hasn't had to dip into it yet.

Although outfitting the UA's Sam M. Walton College of Business
with a wireless network was relatively inexpensive, it probably
wouldn't have mattered the school is flush from a $50 million
donation made earlier this year by the family of WalMart founder Sam
M. Walton. The donation, much of it earmarked for technology
upgrades, was the largest single gift ever given to an American
business school.

Like much of UALR, the business college at the Fayetteville
campus already had the wired infrastructure that held down costs.
"We were in perfect condition to add wireless access points, and we
are pretty much working on putting them in everywhere," said Sandy
Kizer, technology center director at the Walton College. "It took
two techs only about a week to install it from start to finish."

Both the main business building and the Donald W. Reynolds Center
for Enterprise Development are completely wireless, as is the common
outdoor space between the buildings. This means students can travel
with seamless Internet access from one building to another or
between classrooms and the outdoors.

At this time, the only other wireless building on the
Fayetteville campus is the Mullins Library.

One of the goals of the business college is to have at least one
paperless class. Paul Cronan, professor of information systems,
taught a pilot class during spring semester. Graduate students in
the class had access to the wireless network, where they had access
to several large databases they manipulated in class exercises.

This semester, Cronan is using the wireless network in his class
"Seminar in Business Technology" for Ph.D. candidates. The course
helps students learn how, as 'instructors, they can manage the
classroom using wireless handheld devices. They learn how to control
a PowerPoint presentation and send files to students in the
classroom. "What the \wireless network means to education is that
our students now have more tools to increase learning in the
classroom," Cronan said.

"In effect, wireless devices have become 'supermobile' computers.
They will soon be used to provide instant feedback to instructors,
take quizzes and generally facilitate classroom instruction."

Copyright Arkansas Business Oct 28, 2002

Publication date: 2002-10-28

© 2002, YellowBrix, Inc.

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