The plan's the thing: the world of academic telecommunications is changing rapidly. Are you ready to change with it?

With a landscape that changes more frequently and dramatically than the planet Arrakis in Dune, the world of academic telecommunications is not your mother's Information Technology. First, there's the technology itself, a broad array of constantly improving gizmos and gadgets that include everything from the traditional campus telephone to the convergence of voice, data, and video over the Internet protocol--a reality that's still a dream for nearly every technologist in the world. Next, there's the terminology behind the technology, a complicated smorgasbord of acronyms that represent a variety of entities, from service providers to individual circuits and more (see "Say That Again?" page 32). Finally. there's the environment that brings it all together, a strange world that seems to look different every single day.

Navigating this ever-changing environment is never easy; and to paraphrase William Shakespeare, a plan's the thing you need to tackle the telecommunications of today. Some schools, always the trailblazers, attack the issue year by year, eschewing long-term strategies in the event a new technology necessitates a short-term expenditure. Others, opting for more calculated thinking, take a broad-scale approach, spending years on observation and research before formally phasing in a new telecommunications plan. Still other institutions find that the best way to address telecom needs is to do so with partners, increasing volume through collaboration and ensuring lower prices across the board.

However a school tackles telecom, the issue requires business acumen and a bit of farsightedness. In today's economy, as few higher ed budgets allow for schools to approach telecom with multiyear plans, experts agree that some sort of strategy is necessary to succeed down the road. What's more, in order to stay competitive and keep enrollments up, schools must prioritize expenditures and stay ahead of the curve if they're going to keep their constituents (and new applicants) interested.

"The tech part in all of this is easy," says Ed Barboni, senior advisor with the Council of Independent Colleges (www.cic.org), and a long-time IT pro. "When you ask the question, 'How are we going to implement something to make a difference to the campus and the bottom line?' that's where things get complicated."

A Little History

For decades, higher education telecommunications has existed in two separate universes: voice in one, data in the other. Voice, the most basic of information, was transmitted over reserved end-to-end circuits through hard-wired switches--phone jacks, essentially, that linked back to a central routing box somewhere in the heart of campus. Data, on the other hand, was delivered in packets over equipment that was faster and sleeker--an Ethernet. It was a dichotomy that could drive a technologist batty. And it did. Since every phone needed a stand-alone line to the network, for years the standard academic solution to voice telecommunications was to purchase a Private Branch Exchange (PBX).

PBX-land. The PBX was a local switching and control system that enabled a large number of telecom devices within the organization to be connected to a smaller number of telephone lines, essentially coordinating which calls went where. The problem? With a limited number of hardwired switches, a system could handle only so much volume at a time. As a result, even the toughest and most efficient systems faltered at peak volumes, creating downtime and disgruntled users.

In the late 1990s, technologists set out to improve PBX technology once and for all. The result was a method of using a stand-alone server and client-side software to transmit voice over the data protocol, otherwise known as "packet routing." From a cost perspective, the great advantage of this approach was that it shared resources; packets from many conversations traveled through the same wire. The disadvantage, of course, was that sharing resources also meant packets were prone to trip over each other, creating losses and delays.

VoIP. Over the years, this methodology evolved into what is known today as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a method by which voice is sent as data over the Internet in packets of information. Many of the Internet telephony programs in this genre have addressed the problem of late or lost packets by averaging across the gaps--a solution that is better than nothing, but imposes sacrifices on speech clarity when congestion gets intense, and occasionally causes a loss of connection. Still, no matter how you look at it, this technology has become state-of-the-art.

"It's one of those technologies you know will win, but you don't know when," says Walter Czerniak, associate VP for Information Technology at Northern Illinois University. "Everyone just keeps waiting to see when this stuff will actually take hold."

As such, VoIP has become the Holy Grail of campus telecom. For those IHEs that haven't advanced much beyond the PBX, VoIP is the next step, an investment that will move them into the 21st century. And for the institutions that have dabbled with packet routing already, the challenge is to continue to go beyond it and utilize the Internet protocol to improve communications even more. Some schools have answered this call by incorporating wireless and cellular services; others, seeing advanced campus telecommunications as a competitive edge in the higher ed marketplace, have sought to capture more of the Internet itself, and have bought up thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables on the cheap.

Proactive Planning

At Brigham Young University (UT), the current technology plan is pretty basic, and hinges on one technology: VoIP. In early 2001, when school administrators opted to replace some of the oldest buildings on campus, they decided to revamp a seemingly indestructible, 13-year-old Siemens ROLM computerized branch exchange (a computerized PBX), as well, and put Ferrell Mallory, the school's senior architect of communication applications, in charge of finding something new. Mallory weighed his options carefully, considering a number of different PBX boxes. He then considered a revolutionary process of converting the campus's voice traffic to data, and sending it over the Internet.

"For years, we had a plan of eventual convergence of voice, data, and video over the same network. Voice over IP provided us with the perfect opportunity to do just that."

The $5 million installation began immediately, and within months, Mallory had purchased a VoIP backbone from Cisco Systems, Inc (www.cisco.com), as well as VoIP telephones from the same vendor, for 5,500 of the 11,000 faculty and staff members.

The phones--two-line gizmos that retail for about $160 apiece--are considered part of Cisco's new state-of-the-art Architecture for Voice, Video and Data (AVVID) system designed for convergence of every kind. As such, remaining BYU faculty and staff members' phones are scheduled to be replaced sometime before June 2004.

Once all phones are installed, Mallory says the school will develop a broadcast system wherein officials will use a special speaker feature on the devices to broadcast emergency signals and important announcements. The school will also use the system's built-in videoconferencing capabilities to change the way it does business with affiliated representatives at BYU campuses in Idaho and Hawaii. In the past, these people flew to Provo for important meetings; with the new system, officials will be able to conduct business via the Internet, an improvement Mallory estimates could save thousands of dollars each year.

At Drexel University (PA), telecom planning efforts are targeting some more sophisticated leading-edge technologies. There, CIO and VP for Information Resources Technology John Bielec describes the university's plan for a campus-wide mobile telecom effort called Drexel One Mobile Services. The strategy, already in effect, enables students to choose from a variety of different mobile telephone service providers, but requires them to allow the school to push certain types of content to those devices at anytime. As Bielec explains, the plan is meant to supplement existing landline and VoIP technology, and is designed to offer an affordable and sensitive alternative to the cellular phone service students might already have. So far, he adds, it's worked wonders on campus and off.

"Instead of forcing students into one particular technology, we encourage diversity to keep them interested," says Bielec, adding that students currently use various cell providers. "Our agenda is to provide functionality, but make it vendor independent."

At the center of Drexel's strategy are Banner administrative systems and Campus Pipeline portal software from SCT Corp (www.sct.com). With a host of service-provider choices laid out by Bielec and his staff, students can purchase cellular phones equipped to receive data from the Banner software. Then they simply enable certain capabilities online, through a portal provided by Campus Pipeline. Data then flows from Banner, through the portal, to the phone via a Microsoft.net framework that reformats data and serves it up to mobile devices in digestible bytes and bits. The entire process takes mere milliseconds.

Practical applications of this system currently are limited, though Bielec says he has used the technology to broadcast news alerts to students, such as school closure information. Down the road, he says, Drexel will try to push additional content over the network, including traffic information, sports scores, grades, and personalized information about outstanding tuition payments. To get such broadcasts, all students have to do is enable their cell phones.

"There's so much you can do with telecommunications technologies, we're just trying to find the most useful way to incorporate them into our range of services," Bielec says. "Lucky for us, we got into the game at a pretty early stage.

Playing it Safe

While Mallory and Bielec have focused their telecom strategies on integrating fresh, new technologies with existing systems relatively quickly, other schools have been more tactical in their approaches, taking more incremental and open-ended attitudes toward telecom planning. At Princeton University, for instance, Telecommunications Department Manager Frank Ferrara approaches annual budget meetings as debriefing sessions, and offers university administrators a variety of long-term goals, keeping short-term strategies purposely vague. Ferrara says this approach enables him to keep his six- to nine-month spending options open, and prepare for anything--changes in technology, campus needs, availability of funds, or world events.

"Telecom changes so fast, you never know what can happen down the road," he says. "With that in mind, we feel it's important for us to be looking toward the future but securing what we have today."

With a central-office Class 5 PBX from Nortel Networks (www.nortelnetworks.com), in addition to a sweet local telephone service deal with PAETEC Communications, Inc. (www.paetec.com), Ferrara seems to have his immediate bases covered. The PBX, an MSL 100, is one of the most versatile and powerful of its kind, and Ferrara says he's given out more than 15,000 numbers since he installed it in 1989. Then, of course, there's the long-distance service: By purchasing bulk Local Access and Transport Area (LATA) long-distance calling circuits from Verizon (www.verizon.net), instead of opting for the traditional route of paying to lease long-distance packets from one of the Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs), Princeton's telecom costs are a fraction of what they would have been--and all without sacrificing functionality at any point.

Still, this foundation hasn't led Ferrara to complacency. Six months ago, he started a trial with VoIP, and now has a pilot group of 25 staff and faculty users using a variety of Nortel phones and routers. Later this year, Ferrara plans to expand the trial significantly, eventually using the Internet protocol to deliver communications to local emergency services at the school's Princeton, New Jersey campus. Down the road, he says, the VoIP effort could expand to cover as much as 80 or 90 percent of the campus. Still, at the rate he plans, Ferrara admits that "down the road" could be more than a decade away.

"We can always build upon the telecommunications infrastructure we have today," he says. "Until we find something that's going to make it totally go away, I'd say that planning for anything other than natural evolution is premature."

At state-funded Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Walter Czerniak, the school's associate VP of Information Technology, takes a similarly conservative approach, always erring on the side of caution. Czerniak says that before he even considers a telecommunications purchase, he looks to market-research organizations such as Gartner and International Data Corp,, to see how business organizations have tackled the issue differently than IHEs. When he feels he's researched an issue sufficiently, Czerniak convenes an advisory group of representatives from a variety of academic departments, discusses his findings, and attempts to apply the same philosophies to NIU.

Over the years, this methodology has yielded some interesting results. Last year, for instance, his investigation into business investment in VoIP prompted Czerniak to hold off on even a preliminary venture into Internet protocol communications ("Nobody's really doing it yet," he says of the technology, "so why should we?"). At the same time, however, recent business expenditures on proprietary cellular offerings through providers such as Verizon and Sprint PCS have inspired him to investigate the cost of introducing similar programs at NIU.

Here, Czerniak says, he's been working with Verizon Wireless (www.verizonwireless.com) to purchase discounted minutes in bulk, then offer incoming NIU students cellular phone packages for slightly lower-than-market rates, with the school realizing the profit. The strategy is designed to supplement the standard, hard-wired phones students find in their rooms, and a recent effort to secure a portable cellular tower with back-end equipment from Nortel and Cisco makes the cellular approach a viable

alternative. Depending upon traffic, the cellular network delivers data nearly as efficiently as the fast Nortel Class 5 PBX the school has operated since 1986. What's more, with incremental software improvements over the next few months, NIU technologists will soon be able to push news and personalized tuition content over the network, as well, much like the technologists at Drexel.

"Some of the more successful wireless telecommunications offerings in the private market are essentially grown-up paging services," says Czerniak. "We think that doing those kinds of things for students on our campus is where we'll ultimately win."

The Team Approach

Still other academic telecommunications officials feel that the best way for them to eke out a return on their investments is to get a little help from their friends. According to the CIC's Barboni, members of his organization meet quarterly to share war stories about many higher ed business concerns, including telecommunications. And while a number of CIC member schools are merely dabbling in advanced telecommunications strategy, others such as Buena Vista University (IA) are truly leading the pack. Buena Vista, he explains, is spending millions of its own dollars on everything from Cisco VoIP to Nortel wireless--and beyond. Still other institutions of higher education, such as National-Louis University (IL), have teamed with neighboring schools to increase purchasing power and receive discounted rates from CLECs, he reports.

In other instances, smaller schools have opted to go in together on purchasing bundles of unused fiber-optic capacity, mostly in the wake of collapsing telecommunications companies that simply want to make a buck (see box, "Telecom 101," page 29). One mile of fiber-optic cable that used to sell for $1,200 has sold, in some cases, for less than $200--a significant savings, since intercity networks at some larger schools may comprise several thousand miles of fiber. Representatives from the vendor level 3 Communications, Inc. (www.level3.com), for instance, says their firm is selling more than 16,000 linear miles of optical-fiber capacity to the right clients for the right price.

{PLEASE INSERT BOX "TELECOM 101"}

When these assets go on sale, it's literally pennies on the dollar," Sterling Perrin, a research analyst with IDC, said earlier this year. Still, if a college or university cannot purchase these bargain-basement deals alone, teaming with another local or regional institution may be one way to spread the wealth, analysts suggest. EDUCAUSE (www.educause.org), and the Association for Communication Technology Professionals in Higher Education (www.acuta.org) can help IHEs locate other schools seeking purchasing partners; visit their Web sites for more details.

Looking Ahead

Down the road, as fiber-optic fire sales continue and VoIP technology becomes more widespread, perhaps strategies at every institution will include steps to move away from the traditional PBX. In the meantime, as the world of telecom is changing so quickly, it's clear that even the most sophisticated colleges and universities need to develop a plan to incorporate new telecom technologies with old ones, and modernize systems overall Whether an institution decides to tackle the telecommunications issue aggressively or with patience, solo or with friends, strategic planning is paramount, and the approach must be flexible enough to roll with change. "Your telecommunications plan cannot exist in a vacuum," says Princeton's Ferrara. "No matter how you approach it, you need to act to keep up."

Telecom 101

Recent telecom history, and how to overcome it.

Ask industry experts why telecommunications is such a challenge for academic technologists, and they'll blame just about everything on the telecom industry itself. Last decade, the Federal Communications Commission set out to enhance competition in local and long-distance markets by passing the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Unfortunately for just about everyone (except the telecom companies), the FCC has taken a lax approach to implementing the letter of this law. Instead of encouraging telecom parties to negotiate how they interconnect with each other as prescribed by law, the FCC directed state regulators to set detailed rates, terms and conditions, eliminating competition all together. In particular, experts assail the FCC for mandating that Incumbent Local-Exchange Carriers (ILECs) offer more than 400 Unbundled Network Elements (UNEs) to Competitive Local-Exchange Carriers (CLECs) at wholesale rates, constraining ILECs to offer UNEs below cost.

"The flawed process used by the FCC has severely damaged markets and sometimes brought about the opposite effects to those intended," writes Ron Cowles, a research VP with Gartner, Inc (www.gartner.com). "U.S. telecommunications regulations slow the entire economy, stifle competition, and delay the introduction of technologies that could make enterprises more efficient."

In the academic world, this scenario has translated into a mixed bag of realities for colleges of every size. On the whole, while fizzling telecommunications companies are offering rock-bottom rates on everything from phone service to wires, healthy companies are playing hardball, and launching into price wars for just about any school that can't establish bargaining power with their local ILECs. What's more, writes Cowles, because there is no incentive to improve their products, ILECs have resisted investing more in broadband infrastructure when they have felt they'd be giving away use of their networks at bargain prices.

How to avoid such pitfalls? According to Cowles, academic technologists should prepare as follows:

* Implement contractual clauses to provide price protection against access rate increases.

* Add strategic-plan contingencies for technology delays.

* Develop formal processes for managing vendors, ensuring that contractual service-level agreements manage carrier relationships so that poor market conditions do not affect quality of service.

* Exploit the competition, using all opportunities available to get the lowest telecom rates.

Say That Again?

For many academics, telecommunications is about as difficult to understand as Swahili. Here are some of the terms you need to know:

LEC--Local Exchange Carrier. A company that owns the fiber-optic connections in your local area or region. This company usually delivers telecommunications services to local businesses and homes.

ILEC--Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier. A group of LECs that includes the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) and other local carriers.

CLEC--Competitive Local Exchange Carrier. A group of larger LECs that includes all major regional providers, including AT&T, Covad Communications, and MCI (formerly WorldCom).

UNE--Unbundled Network Element, which consists of a seamless combination of an unbundled loop, unbundled local switching, and unbundled interoffice transport within a telecommunications network.

PBX--Private Branch Exchange. A local switching and control system that enables a large number of telecommunications devices within an organization to be connected to a smaller number of telephone lines.

LATA--Local Access and Transport Area. Regional telecommunications zones, usually serviced by one or more CLECs.

Matt Villano is a freelance writer based in Seattle, and in Mass Beach, CA.