Converged Devices >> Waiting on the Wave
- By Joseph C. Panettieri
- 03/01/07
Are you prepared to handle the information needs of the next wave of college students? Start planning now, to prevent a tsunami of mobile devices from overwhelming your wireless networks.
Ash Dyer is building the ultimate digital playground for college
students and residents in Cambridge, MA. As a researcher for
MIT’s Project Airnet, Dyer this year is helping to deploy a citywide
wireless mesh network that will be free for all Cambridge
residents and students. But the Cambridge network
isn’t the only one of its kind. Across the country, universities are helping
towns and cities deploy public broadband systems that will ultimately
serve millions of students, residents, and businesses. Eager proponents
of these broadband WiFi systems include such schools as Ball State
University (IN) and Case Western Reserve University (OH). As each
new public broadband network comes online, it paves the way for new
types of mobile devices to hop on to the internet. It also sets the stage for
universities to rework their existing applications for mobile access.
“Potentially, any server-based function
can be reformatted for small-screen
display and touchpad interaction,”
asserts H. O’Neal Smitherman, vice
president for information technology
and CIO at Ball State. “Even such functions
as class cancellations through
Blackboard are
possible.”
What a boon for students; they simply
crave that type of mobile power—and a
whole lot more. Today, more than half
of Harvard Medical School (MA) students
carry personal digital assistants
(PDAs) such as iPods, Palm handhelds,
Pocket PCs, and smart phone devices,
according to a recent survey by Harvard
Medical School (see charts in this article). And nearly 20 percent
of the survey participants say they’re
eager to hear class lectures as podcasts,
and to view lectures as digital videos on
their portable devices.
Yet despite such lofty goals, it’s
important to remember that the mobile
revolution remains in its early stages.
For instance, only 5 percent of students
use their PDAs and cell phones for
e-mail services, according to Harvard’s
survey results.
Vendors are feverishly working to develop
new capabilities for mobile phones.
Still, there’s growing evidence that
students want to trade in their laptops
for smaller mobile devices. According
to focus groups conducted by Wireless Harlem, a
nonprofit public broadband advocate
in New York City, most people ages 16
to 30 want laptop-type functionality
squeezed into their smart phones.
“Wireless Harlem also found that this
age group wasn’t swayed by advertisements,
but relied much more on word of
mouth,” says Dyer. “Therefore, if you
see something adopted by a group of
students, you can expect it to become
somewhat of an epidemic.”
The Road Ahead: Dual Mode
University CIOs and their municipal
counterparts will need to ensure that
broadband systems provide plenty of
bandwidth for hundreds of different
devices used by thousands—and perhaps
even millions—of users. Some
university WiFi networks are already
clogged with too many users. Moreover,
universities must somehow provide
wireless network access while safeguarding
student privacy.
Do You Own a PDA? Students may be better primed
than you thought for expanded mobile data delivery.
Above, the percentage of Harvard Medical School
students owning a personal digital assistant.
Not surprisingly, many colleges are
testing endpoint security solutions and
next-generation encryption technologies.
Among the most promising offerings
is identity-based encryption (IBE),
which uses e-mail information to protect
user identities; Voltage Security and several other
start-ups are working overtime to popularize
IBE.
To be sure, tomorrow’s college campuses
will be filled with converged
devices that allow students to easily
roam between cellular networks, WiFi
networks, and other types of broadband
systems. The rise of so-called dualmode
phones—which move seamlessly
between cellular and WiFi networks—
appears inevitable. Worldwide shipments
of dual-mode handsets are
expected to skyrocket from a few hundred
thousand units this year to 300 million
units in 2011, according to market
research firm ABI Research.