Universities Respond To Growth Of WirelessUniversities Respond To Growth Of Wireless

As growing numbers of tech-savvy students transition to higher education with wireless devices in tow, colleges and universities are ramping up their wireless infrastructures to let students and faculty wirelessly access information. And they're doing so at a reduced cost and with fewer barriers to connectivity.

The University of South Florida, for instance, is getting ready to deploy a mobile messaging application from Air2Web, whose software extends wired infrastructures to wireless networks. The mobile app will let university administrators send one-way text messages to students' cell phones, pagers, and PDAs. Because some of its students are commuters, getting a wireless message about a class cancellation could save them a trip to campus, says George Ellis, associate VP of Information Technologies at the University of South Florida. Wireless messages also will reach students quicker than an E-mail blast, Ellis says.

The mobile messaging deployment will begin in January and will be open to all students at the university's four campuses. Participating students will register with Air2Web, creating profiles that include their cell-phone or pager numbers, wireless carriers, and device specs. Then university programmers can write an application for a message once, and Air2Web will format the message for delivery to the various registered devices, Ellis says.

The cost of deploying the 802.11b standard to wireless networks has dropped enough to make it a viable alternative to Ethernet connectivity on college campuses, Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney says. As more cell phones and PDAs are introduced to the campus-networking environment, Dulaney suggests that college and university IT departments gain control over support costs and security concerns by purchasing handheld mobile devices and distributing them to students.