Vadodara: M S University has become the first publically funded university in Gujarat to become fully Wi-Fi enabled.
The university on Tuesday launched the second phase of its Wi-Fi project whereby all the faculties, institutes, hostel buildings spread across 272 acres have been covered under the Wi-Fi project.
Nearly 40,000 students and 2,000 staff members of the university will be able to take advantage of the facility with the implementation of phase II of the project.
“We are happy that more than 100 buildings including 16 boys and girls hostels of our university have been covered under this project,” said MSU vice-chancellor professor Parimal Vyas, adding that for the university the biggest challenge was to cover its satellite campuses like the M K Amin Arts and Science College and College of Commerce located at Padra and WREMI, Samiyala located far away from the main campus in the city.
“Around 20,000 concurrent internet users will be supported through this facility. Students will be its biggest beneficiaries as all the e-journals of our library will become accessible to them,” he said.
While the cost of phase I was around Rs 2.25 crore including towards components and installation, phase II has cost Rs 3.40 crore to the publicly funded university. Also, the university will be incurring an expense of Rs 56 lakh in the next three years towards annual maintenance of the facility.
The University Grants Commission and the Ministry of Human Resource Development have made it mandatory to provide Wi-Fi in the university campuses.
Over 2,000 managed access points including 1,020 access points in phase I and 950 access points in phase II have been installed through the project.
Also, seven radio frequency towers with 450 MBPS speed have been installed at computer centre, Faculty of Technology and Engineering, Oriental Institute, WREMI, Samiyala, M K Amin Arts and Science College at Padra, Faculty of Performing Arts and Faculty of Medicine.
While the integration has been done by Aruba (now known as HP), the project has been implemented by Microlink Technologies, Ahmedabad. A team of five members from the Ahmedabad-based firm will be available to provide the services related to Wi-Fi during 10 am and 6 pm in the university.
No access to Facebook
Vadodara: While MSU has made its entire campus wi-fi enabled, students and staffers will have no access to popular social networking site – Facebook. The university has taken the policy decision of blocking the website for its users. However, students and staffers will be able to access other platforms including Instagram, Twitter among others.
