GlobeQUEST offers wireless connectivity in schools, universities

GlobeQUEST, the corporate business group of Innove Communications, Inc. has penetrated schools and universities to provide wireless connectivity in the campuses.

As a pilot project, the company announced that the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) will be the first university in the Visayas and Mindanao area to be provided with Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) facility networking standard which will allow its faculty, students and staff to connect to the Internet without cumbersome and expensive cables and wires.

MSU-IIT, an autonomous external campus of the MSU System with about 9,000 students enrolled per semester, is the first Wi-Fi-powered school project by GlobeQUEST in Visayas and Mindanao.

Under the agreement, GlobeQUEST has provided MSU-IIT with two circuits of Internet plus four access nodes in designated areas to give students and professors the ease and freedom to check their e-mail or surf the Web using their Wi-Fi-capable personal digital assistants or laptops.

MSU-IIT has chosen Wi-Fi as a way to improve student mobility while reducing infrastructure costs since it is much easier and cheaper to put in place wireless access points than rewire buildings on campus.

The move makes MSU-IIT at par with universities in more advanced countries like the US and gives it the distinction of being one of the early Wi-Fi adopters in the Philippines, an Innove Communications official announcement stated.

For Wi-FI, GlobeQUEST uses a wireless technology similar to a cell phone where roaming and being connected converge.

Wi-Fi enabled computers and PDA's send and receive data indoors and out, anywhere within the range of an Access Point or Base Transceiver. This technology is envisioned to provide business-to-business mobility, modifications, and growth.

A Wi-Fi network can be used to connect computers to each other, to the Internet, and even to wired networks which use 802.3 dubbed as the Ethernet.

Wi-Fi networks operate in the unlicensed 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio bands with an 11Mbps (802.11b) or 54Mbps (802.11g) data rate or with products that contain both bands (dual band) so they can provide similar performance equivalent to the basic 10BaseT wired Ethernet networks.