Talk to any Salt Lake Community College student who regularly visits South City Campus and they’ll have one major complaint: the Wi-Fi is awful.
The two main reasons for the spotty signal is the building’s brick exterior, which absorbs most of the signal, and the growing amount of devices that now use the Wi-Fi.
“We used to plan for coverage, just so students could get a signal at all, but now that students are carrying so many more wireless devices, our strategy changed to density,” says Chief Information Officer Bill Zoumadakis. “So we [have] looked at the area, and know where students are congregating and plan to put more access points there.”
Zoumadakis explains that because of the magnitude and thickness of the walls, the building needs a lot more access points to provide the same signal density found at the Taylorsville Redwood Campus.
“We’ve gone through our campuses and upgraded the wireless in each one [except for] South City … Jordan [Campus] or Library [Square],” he adds.
Zoumadakis expects the network upgrades at South City Campus to be completed by July 1 of this year.
As the CIO, Zoumadakis recognizes the problems students face with the Wi-Fi and is heavily involved with implementing solutions.
“Our [network] upgrades happen at night, and when they do happen, I’m one of those types that are really involved with my employees,” he says.
Zoumadakis has some advice for students who have trouble connecting.
“It’s a matter of how many devices you have, and what you’re doing with them,” he explains. “When you stream [data] with each device it obviously takes more bandwidth to stream, so [imagine] 20 or 30 students sitting in an area all streaming with two or three devices on their person.
“A lot of the time, it’s simply a matter of moving, of finding an access point where not as many people are accessing it.”
Any SLCC student who experiences problems with the Wi-Fi or other IT services can contact the Help Desk to report an issue.
