Most Elon University students living on-campus take Wi-Fi availability for granted, but some residents of the Oaks Neighborhood are frustrated by their lack of access to this important commodity.
“Since the beginning of the year, the Wi-Fi has been very spotty,” said junior Tommy Mackey, resident of Oaks C.
Among the six buildings that house upword of 600 students, the “elon-secure” Wi-Fi has been cutting in and out.
“Slowly as the year started, I realized I don’t get Wi-Fi in my personal room. I get wifi here in the common room, but once I go in to my own room, there is zero Wi-Fi,” said junior Morgan Bodenarain, an Oaks E resident.
In September, Mackey decided to call the staff at the Technology Service Desk to see if they could fix his Wi-Fi.
“They specifically contacted me saying they came into our Oaks, fixed our Wi-Fi — and that’s just not the case,” Mackey said. “Like, I tried the next day when they emailed me, and I couldn’t even get that email up because the Wi-Fi wasn’t working.”
“I guess because we pay so much to live in Oaks singles we sort of expect to have some amenities,” said Coughlin.
According to Christopher Waters, CIO and vice president for technology so many students in one area can crowd the network. Waters says there’s plenty of bandwidth for the internet. He said technology services are working to fix the problem by using funds from an annual funding process based off residential students.
Waters said he requested through the university budget to allocate funds to upgrade Wi-Fi in the neighborhood over the next three years. Last year they renovated A and D apartments, this Fall Break they did apartments B and F and next year they will be renovating apartments C and E.
“The challenge we run into is where people are located on our network when they are trying to connect,” Waters said.
Student have tried to call for support, but Waters says when residents call, 90 percent of the time they can fix the wireless problem in that area.
With the registration of class schedules sometimes coming down to a millisecond, some students said they are not going to rely on the comfort of their home and, instead, will go elsewhere to register.
“With class registration coming up this week, I will probably be doing it in the library or in another location because I want to make sure I can get those things in on time,” Coughlin said. “You want to get it the second it happens and if it is, like, super slow loading up, and if I have any problems with submitting it, that’s going to be bad for me.”