How Important Is Wi-Fi to a College Education?

How important is Wi-Fi to college students? Here are a few impressive facts from a 2008
survey conducted by Wakefield Research for the Wi-Fi Alliance. Keep in mind this survey
was conducted before tablets hit the market or smartphones had penetrated 50 percent of
the population:
Fully 90% believe Wi-Fi access is as essential to an education as a classroom or a
computer.
Wi-Fi has become so prevalent on college campuses that ABI Research said Wi-Fi
penetration should reach 99% of all campuses by 2013. Colleges worldwide spent about
$137 million in 2007 on Wi-Fi access points and controllers, a figure that's expected to
grow to $837 million in 2013, according to ABI.

These two statements by prospective college students during recent campus recruiting visits
demonstrate how important a good Wi-Fi signal can be to student life. Done right, high quality
reliable Wi-Fi in the residence hall contributes to a memorable student campus experience. It
may not draw lots of attention when it is working, but when the Wi-Fi service dips, students take
notice and the reaction can get ugly.
Inadequate campus and residential Wi-Fi can lead to a range of bad consequences for a school.
When the Wi-Fi is generally good, but goes down intermittently, students typically just complain
privately. If the quality remains poor, they will likely decide to live off campus. Because Wi-Fi is

such an important part of the student experience, bad Wi-Fi can leave a lasting impression,
affecting how students feel about their school even after they have left.
In the worst case, the quality of resident Wi-Fi can be a factor in the students decision of which
school to attend. Wi-Fi access and network performance are now usually visible during campus
visits. If it is poor, or if enrolled students are complaining about it, that fact will not go unnoticed
by the visiting prospect. There are numerous forums, such as Yik Yak, where students can visibly
express their displeasure with a substandard campus Wi-Fi network.
The Role of Wi-Fi in the Residence Hall
Wi-Fi has now become much more than simply a medium for shifting mobile data
communication off the cellular network. In the past, most PCs and laptops may have connected
to the network via Ethernet, but that connection is now provided mostly by Wi-Fi. With the
advent of the flipped classroom, educational content has shifted heavily to video, driving up
bandwidth needs outside of the classroom. Students also rely on their mobile devices for news
and entertainment, as well as communication.
Managing The Residence Hall Network Experience
To optimize the user experience for the majority of residents, some restrictions or extra charges
are typically imposed on uber-users, the set of students whose bandwidth needs tend toward
infinite. As discussed at the EDUCAUSE conference, gaming can be restricted to wired network
access, to preserve Wi-Fi bandwidth. Schools that do allow game consoles on their Wi-Fi may
forbid certain console features, such as access to Netflix and Hulu. The Campus Computing

Project survey found that 25% of schools charge an added fee to uber-users who consume over
20 GB/week.
According to this years Annual State of the ResNet Report, more than half (51.5%) of colleges
and universities now dedicate at least 1 Gb/s specifically to their residential networks. More than
half (55%) of the schools with in-house Internet limit or shape bandwidth across their residential
networks. To meet the demands of their residential networks, 54% of the schools had an increase
in funding for these networks. That number was only 38% the year before.
Comings and Goings Of Wired Connections
It is safe to say that some form of wired network access will continue in use on college campuses
for the foreseeable future. Wired Ethernet is likely to maintain a role with student gaming and
video consoles to keep that load off Wi-Fi. At least for the short-term, there are still many PCs
that best connect to the network via wired Ethernet. The rule of thumb in residence halls has
been one wired port per pillow.
Telephone land lines, though, are no longer generally needed nor provided in the residence halls.
Schools typically ask each student about their preferred channel for emergency communications;
email, text, or voice to their mobile phone.
Cable TV feeds may be next to go as students switch over to Netflix and other Internet streaming
sources. In the short term, however, students still feel they require cable TV access for sports and
local TV programming. This may be behind a blip in cable TV usage; one survey showed that
cable TV wiring actually increased from 2012-2014.

Is There Any Alternative To Campus Residence Wi-Fi?

Do not get fooled into believing that a special contract with a 4G carrier could eliminate the need
for Wi-Fi. In the 4G campus contract scenario, a mobile carrier has students register their devices
with the mobile carrier to use 4G/LTE data. On the surface, the rates seem worth consideration.
However, the mobile wireless signal is rarely available everywhere inside the buildings without
special beacons. Even where the signal is accessible, the speeds prove inconsistent and inferior to
Wi-Fi speeds. Furthermore, not all devices are equipped with 4G. The final cost or pricing of
these 4G contracts proves to be notoriously hard to predict. In the end, this approach only
encourages students to activate their own private access points, which can bring on a nightmare
of RF interference and unreliability. The overall technology pricing to provide 1 MB over LTE is
much higher than the cost 1 MB over Wi-Fi.
Another trap to avoid is turning your residence halls into an RF jungle by permitting, or worse
yet, encouraging students to provide their own Wi-Fi. Many schools initially ignored Wi-Fi in the
residence halls, leaving students no alternative other than setting up their own hotspots.
Incoming freshman had no clue what sort of gear they needed and the resulting chaos caused
rampant interference and unreliable connections. Managing RF signals requires careful planning
and thorough understanding of all the subtleties. Leaving students to add their own access points
and routers is a sure way to create signal interference, making no one happy.
How to Insure Your Campus Wi-Fi Provides the Best Student Experience
Providing quality residence hall Wi-Fi starts with a site survey to understand where to optimally
locate the Wi-Fi access points. The access points themselves should be easy tomanage and

capable of providing wired-like performance. Since students will be bringing their own devices
onto the network, a comprehensive BYOD dashboard is required that can implement policies for
which devices are permitted and what resources, including bandwidth, each device can access.
In order to maintain a quality Wi-Fi experience for the students, you need a means to monitor the
actual network performance. Network application analytics give you the ability to recognize
when the network starts to get congested, as well as spot rogue devices. And if performance ever
does become a problem, youll be able to tell if it is within the campus or caused by your
broadband Internet connection, or if it is due to a slow remote server.
7signal that college student attitudes about campus tech and residence hall wi-fi
7signal recently surveyed over 200 full-time college students to ask them their attitudes about
technology, specifically the Wi-Fi on campus. Some fascinating statistic were compiled, which
we will review here. We set out to learn how important Wi-Fi was to student success and we
were quite shocked by the stats once the results started rolling in.

Most Popular Devices

When I went to school, the most popular guy on the floor was the one with a desktop computer.
For a case of Mountain Dew, he would let me use his computer to type up and print papers and
this allowed me to avoid having to go to the dreaded, zoo-like campus computer lab. Wi-Fi
wasnt even available yet. My, how times have changed.
With mobility representing a cultural shift in our society, the use of desktop computers has
rapidly declined. When we asked college students about the devices they use the most
smartphone, laptop computer and tablet all beat out the antiquated desktop computer. Yes, its
perhaps time to throw the dirt on it because its pretty much dead.

Time Spent Online

We were curious to know how much time students spend online because this directly impacts the
capacity and capabilities of the Wi-Fi network. 40% of students indicated they spend between 4
and 8 hours a day online and nearly 30% said they spend 8 to 12 hours online. That adds up to a
lot of air time! Assuming that students sleep between 11PM and 7AM, were talking about
cramming all that usage into just 16 waking hours. Also of note: 4% of respondents indicated
they are online more than 16 hours a day. Sleep is apparently optional for these people. Nice.

Most Important Factors When Connecting

With all the time spend online, we wanted to know what students felt was important about the
experience. Download speed and ubiquitous coverage tied for most important. Was their ever a
doubt? Perhaps a wasted question, but you never know. Interestingly, security was third and
upload speed fourth, which I find somewhat peculiar because I thought the ability to quickly

upload photos and videos was extremely important. Maybe it is, but download speed and
coverage are table steaks I suppose.

What Students Do Online

We kept it clean and offered some nice categories for students to choose from. I am happy to
report that research/homework was the number one answer, followed closely by video streaming
and social media. WLAN professionals need to keep an eye on the rapid growth of video
streaming because, as you know, its a bandwidth hog and can bring any Wi-Fi network to its
knees. Its not just YouTube. Its Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime as well. Students dont need a
television anymore. All they need is your Wi-Fi. Advice: plan now for exponential growth in
video usage. Its just going to get bigger and bigger.

Students Need Wi-Fi to Succeed

Next, we asked how important reliable, high performance Wi-Fi was to their success as a student.
Just being honest herewe were hoping for a big number because this validates the need for a
Wi-Fi performance management system. Needless to say, we were pleasantly surprised by the
data. 48% said they could not be successful without it, while another 48% said that it was
important. Wow. Thats 96%. If there was ever a doubt about the mission critical nature of
campus Wi-Fiwell, there you have it.
In the very next question we asked how often students complain (to themselves or to someone
else) about the Wi-Fi on campus and 15% responded with, All the time. 22% said quite often
and 41% indicated that sometimes they complain about the quality of Wi-Fi.

What Students Do Next

This next question was perhaps the most interesting and important of them all. As you can see
from the above statistics, 78% said they complain about the Wi-Fi on campus. However, only
18% indicated that they report it to the campus IT Help Desk. 71% of students survey admitted
that they just struggle through the issue. This is critical information because how are WLAN
professionals supposed to know whats going on without feedback from the student body? There
are many IT folks who dont believe theres a problem, and why should they when only 1 out of
every 5 students having a problem actually reports it!
Like I just mentioned a moment ago, this is perhaps the most important piece of data gathered by
the survey because it ties it all together. To recap:
96% say reliable Wi-Fi is important to their success as a student.
78% say they sometimes, frequently or always complain about the poor Wi-Fi quality.
71% just struggle through the issues.
Only 18% say they actually report the issue.
In conclusion, the quality of the campus residential Wi-Fi network can be an important factor in
recruiting students, insuring they have the best possible campus experience, and may even leave
a lasting impression of their school experience. Delivering consistent-quality, high-performance
Wi-Fi starts with easily-managed reliable access points, network management
software with BYOD access control, and network application analytics.