@ ACUTA: Universities need to work with operators to get LTE services on campus

PHOENIX—Adequate wireless coverage is going to be a competitive advantage when students are choosing which university they attend. As such, universities are going to have to become proactive working with wireless operators if they want 4G services on their campuses.
That was just one message delivered to IT personnel at ACUTA’s (the association for information communications technology professionals in higher education) Winter Seminar under way in Phoenix. While higher education has done a decent job of deploying 802.11 services, with many campuses already upgraded to 802.11n, they haven’t necessarily paid as much attention to commercial wireless operations on their property, said Dewitt Latimer, a consultant at Techwitt L.L.C., whose credits include CTO at the University of Notre Dame. In the campus of the “not-so-near future,” Latimer said students would consider wireless access a necessity even more so than they do today. Social networks continue to grow, with 700 billion minutes per month spent on Facebook, and “Tivo in the cloud” applications like Hulu and Netflix gaining traction, especially with younger people. Students who have a nice wireless experience in their homes expect the same type of experience when they are at school.
As companies begin to advertise their fourth-generation networks, students will want access to those networks, noted NextG Networks’ Rod Perry. Since 4G networks are expensive for carriers to deploy, carriers are going to be selective about where they deploy the advanced technologies. As such, university personnel are going to have to be proactive in working with wireless carriers. “What are carriers planning for your campus for LTE,” Perry asked the audience.
“4G isn’t their problem; it’s both of ours,”Dewitt echoed. “It’s a ‘squeaky’ wheel rollout.” Because the process of getting better coverage and capacity on a campus can take a long time internally, even before the IT department starts to work with operators, IT personnel need to take a proactive approach today. Further, because of budget cuts at colleges and the lag time it will take states to recover from the economic downturn, Dewitt said universities should consider outsourcing their Wi-Fi networks if it is less expensive. Universities are famous for wanting to build everything themselves and even overbuild, but that model may not work in today’s environment. “We’re entering a ‘just good enough’ era,” he said.
IT personnel said buildings that are LEED (leadership in energy and environmental design) certified are particularly hard to get a signal into because of the way they are constructed. In those cases, Perry said planners have to consider indoor wireless networks like Distributed Antenna System (DAS) deployments because RF will not penetrate inside the glass. In a show of hands, only one IT administrator of about 50 in the room said he was pleased with the commercial wireless coverage on his campus.