The IHE as ISP: with shrinking revenues from long-distance service resale, IHEs move to new telecom models.

As part of their planning for a Campus Village that when completed in 2005 will be home to 4,800 students and 50 faculty and staff, California's San Jose State University surveyed students regarding their telecommunications and technology needs. Virtually all responding students owned a computer, printer, and cell phone. When asked what features should be in a basic package of technology services, they replied: hard-wired 911 service, high-speed Internet, hard-wired telephone, basic cable or satellite TV, and voicemail. Optional add-ons they would consider were: cell phone service, premium cable, and pager Internet access. Despite the high ownership of cell phones, students said they still wanted hard-wired phone service both in their living rooms and bedrooms. Half the students said the quality of the technology package could definitely persuade them to live in the Campus Village.

BECOMING A PROVIDER

It's not surprising, then, that institutions of higher education are re-examining their role as provider of telecommunication services. Motivations range from new construction projects to the need to replace aging PBX switches. Some colleges and universities believe digital technologies for communication have converged to the point that they should be carried and managed on a single network. Others are unconvinced that the merger is appropriate, but are looking at other ways to reconfigure services and make new alliances in telecommunications.

Peter Andrews, a consultant for IBM's Advanced Business Institute (www.ibm.com), says that three qualities characterize the future-ready technology and communications infrastructure. It must be: 1) big enough to accommodate growing opportunities, 2) fully leveraged so that all its capabilities are compatible and mutually supporting, and 3) flexible so that it can deal with unanticipated changes. "Such an infrastructure," says Andrews, "might go beyond being ready for new opportunities; it might create them by providing more latitude as new business possibilities become visible."

Why not be a CLEC? At St. Olaf College (MN), Craig Dunton serves as director of a telecommunications department that also serves neighboring Carleton College (MN), Shattuck-St. Mary's School, and the Northfield Hospital These diverse institutions each have their own PBX and cable plant. What is about to change is that their shared telecom department is about to become a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC)--in essence, its own local dial-tone provider. Dunton estimates that becoming a CLEC, which has just received preliminary approval from the state of Minnesota, wil save the group of institutions $4,000 per month.

Although Dunton and his staff install and maintain all wire and fiber infrastructure for the collaborating institutions, he is not an advocate of the "converged" network model, saying, "It has not been proved to me that it is better service, less costly, or easier to maintain. In our case, none of those make any sense." The biggest advantages of the shared, centrally managed telecommunications system at these institutions have been the elimination of duplicate equipment and services and a commitment to rigorous standards for the campus cable plants. The CLEC initiative became possible in large part because of the successful integration of telecommunications services at the most basic level of physical plant and maintenance services.

Students at St. Olaf College, like those polled at San Jose, still use wired phones. But many of them had opted not to sign up for long distance service through the college, finding dramatically lower rates with calling cards from discount stores. Now St. Olaf is offering a 4-cents-per-minute rate in an effort to win back that business. Dunton says he is convinced that there is still a market for low-cost reliable telephone service on campus.

CLEC status for the Minnesota group also opens the possibility that other local organizations might come to them for local exchange service. Increasingly, the business of providing telecommunications service is crossing the boundary between town and gown.

Telecom cafe. Trinity College (CT) operates Trinfo.Cafe, a telecommunications resource for organizations and individuals neighboring the college. Services include workshops, a computer refurbishing and recycling program, and provision of high-speed Internet connectivity in homes. According to John Langeland, CIO at Trinity College, "It is clear that these services have been important and even transformative for some of the people and organizations." Trinity College is looking for ways to sustain the program, originally funded into the future by a grant from the Kellogg Foundation.

BETTER INTERNET SERVICES

Many IHEs are providing Internet connectivity to their off-campus members or aligning themselves with commercial ISPs. Lower costs for connection are one of the motivations for these service plans. Other rationale cited include uniform quality of service, and extension of campus LAN functionality to the off-campus community.

Differentiated services. At the University of Arizona, Network Operations Manager Terry Wimmer says, "The multiple hops around the country that most Internet services take before coming back to UA don't allow you all the connecting privileges you have on the UA campus." By including direct access to the campus network in the RFP (request for proposal) for Internet service providers, the university hopes to differentiate the negotiated service from those of other ISPs.

Good dial-up. Ohio State University provides ISP service for off-campus members of the university community, with several gradations in service and cost. The low-end plan lists for $1.95 per month, with 10 hours of access followed by $.10 for each additional hour. The OSU plans guarantee dial-in access without busy signals.

Local dial-up and security. At $9.95 per month, the ISP offering at the University of Utah features local dial-up access in 10 Utah cities and 1,400 cities in the U.S. and Canada. Subscribers connect to the campus using a virtual private network (VPN), which extends access to some normally campus-only services, and has the further benefit of encrypting transmitted information for better security.

Recommending regionals. Widener University (PA and DE) recommends SNiP (www.snip.net), a regional public ISP for its off-campus community. The university Web site mentions plans for further services it hopes to conclude with SNiP--intranet connectivity figuring among them.

VOICE OVER WIRELESS LAN 

Dartmouth College (NH) has taken a different approach to reshaping telecommunications services for its community. It is one of a number of institutions that have opted to converge voice and data services. Beginning this fall semester, Dartmouth is phasing in the use of voice telephony over the campus wireless LAN. Software that allows a user to make and receive phone calls on a PC or PDA has been distributed to first-year students. Along with this introduction of new technology, Dartmouth has decided it will not charge for long-distance telephony, for two reasons: the cost of billing is thought to exceed the cost of the calls, and tracking call detail on a wireless LAN poses considerable technical challenges. Bob Johnson, associate director for Telecommunications, says, "[There is] a true belief here that voice and Ethernet connectivity are like a utility. It just needs to be part of the infrastructure of the college. Voice will be just another application on the network."

Dartmouth's initiative is focused largely on voice communication within the campus 802.]1b network--which is due to add the "a" and "g" standards later this fall. Johnson is confident the campus network has the capacity to carry an increasing volume of voice traffic. Of course, once phone calls cross the campus boundary and enter the Internet, the quality of service will be out of Dartmouth's hands and will depend on traffic levels and throughput on the public network. The college's commitment to high-volume networked telecommunications goes back to the advent of the BlitzMail e-mail/messaging system in 1988. Johnson says the college is now already working on a pilot project to use the 802.11a network to deliver streaming video. If the experiment works, Dartmouth will use wireless video to replace its aging cable TV system, at savings of up to $1 million.

DRIVING NEW INITIATIVES

With constant advances in consumer-level services and devices, telecommunications technology is developing at a very rapid pace. Students have become avid users of low-cost, high-tech devices and services, sometimes at a pace that IHEs have been hard pressed to follow. Campus resale of long-distance service has plummeted as discount cards, computer-based instant messaging, and cell phones have become popular. With telephone, cable TV, and data already standard services in most dormitories, the challenge many institutions are facing now is to find the right technological and business models to deliver those services (and others that might be next to arrive). Some are starting to move multiple services to run on the campus IP network. Others are looking for new ways to manage their existing technologies and equipment plant more economically. The distinction between on-campus and off-campus telecommunication is also changing as the need to connect to the institutional LAN from the community grows. With almost all academic activity affected by IT, the ability to connect is essential.

Certainly, IHEs have invested very substantially in data networks. They also operate expensive PBXs and cable TV head-end equipment. With the shrinking revenues from resale of long-distance service to students, new models for funding telecommunications-and the possibility of adopting new technologies--are on the agenda now on many campuses.

Tom Warger is a consultant for Edutech International (www.edutechint.com).