Chula, cellular firms join to spread wi-fi across campus

The move is part of the strategy as a “digital university” to help 40,000 students and 10,000 teachers to stay connected to the Internet all the time throughout the campus.
Professor Pirom Kamolratanakul, president of Chulalongkorn, said yesterday that the availability of Wi-Fi throughout the entire campus would facilitate learning for students and change the teaching model from lecture-based to more discussion-based.
Technology will not replace lecturers but will empower learning by assisting both lecturers and learners.
Wireless Internet is now viewed as a utility service. Offering Wi-Fi throughout the 1,153-rai (184.5-hectare) area of the university will be a part of students’ daily life, for both learning and lifestyle.
Supot Tiarawut, the assistant to the president responsible for information technology, said the university already had 800 hot spots. Under this project, it will install 800 more hot spots to cover 100 per cent of the campus.
“At these hot spots, students can choose the service provider, Chula Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi from the four operators. They sign in with a username and password. That is it.
They can enjoy staying on the Internet all the time when they are at the university,” he said. Within three months, all the new hot spots will be implemented.
The university is concerned about security issues by opening Wi-Fi for its students and lecturers as well as visitors. It plans to increase the budget for a system security.
However, Wi-Fi is just the access point. Once users sign in, they will be authenticated. The university has also adopted the high-level security standard – WPA2 Enterprise encryption – for the Chula Wi-Fi service.