Many campus employees use cell phones. The UCSD bookstore co-ordinates the orders for cell phones but ACT does the billing for monthly charges, passing them through to the appropriate billing index. UCSD does not have a contract for exclusive service with any one provider. Departments are free to choose whichever provider and plan is most appropriate. The providers in the San Diego area are Verizon, Cingular, AT&T, Sprint and Nextel. Nextel offers a push-to-talk feature that is especially useful for departments with technicians who travel around campus. Other providers plan to bring out push-to-talk service, but the service will not operate between the various networks.

Verizon will be the first provider to provide 3G high-speed data connections throughout their network. Their EVDO service uses the CDMA technology, developed by Qualcomm, which gives typical speeds of 300 kpbs to 500 kbps, with possible bursts of up to 2 Mbps. San Diego and Washington, D.C., were the first cities to get this service, but Verizon announced they will extend it nationwide. We do not know how many of UCSD’s faculty, staff or students are already using the EVDO service, but the total is probably well over 100 and likely to increase.

Over the last few years, UCSD built one of the largest 802.11b networks in the country. There are over 900 Wireless Access Points (WAPs) on the network, and more are added every week. Wireless services are available in all classrooms, food service areas and outside gathering places on the campus. One hundred sixty-four buildings are fully or partially covered. All new buildings are being equipped with WAPs, and wireless networking is now being included as part of the Next Generation Network’s (NGN) building upgrade program. Much of the initial impetus for installing wireless networking on campus came from the faculty. There is a sense that UCSD is at the forefront of wireless development and that wireless is appropriate for the campus. A strong demand for wireless from instructors, researchers, students and staff, and the wireless network provides a synergy and energy that is helping to define UCSD.

Installing and running one of the largest wireless networks has its challenges. First and foremost, it has transitioned very quickly from a test and niche application into a production network. As a result, we need to spend more resources on managing and maintaining it than we anticipated. The campus now expects the wireless network to be available 24/7, and we must address how this can be accommodated within the NGN, which was developed before wireless networking was even envisioned.

We also need to segment the network and provide user authentication. We use a system from Vernier to provide these functions. Although at one stage our network was growing faster than that system could handle, Vernier recently made some improvements to their product and the network is more stable.

Most of the WAPs in our network are Avaya AP3s that have dual card slots. There are places in our network where we will want to provide the faster 802.11g in addition to 802.11b. But, we found that Avaya’s AP3 does not perform as it should in dual mode. Avaya is replacing the AP3 in their product line with the AP8. Hopefully, our test will show that the AP8 will work better.

We are presently installing a network management system for the wireless network from Airwave. This will allow us to monitor and upgrade all of the WAPs on the network easily. It will also give us statistics on useage and traffic patterns, which will let us become much more pro-active in engineering and upgrading the network.

UCSD operates an analog 800MHz trunked radio system, which has approximately 380 users. It was installed in the mid 1990s as part of a UCOP initiative, and UCSD owns the frequencies. The system is used by the Police Department and by other campus departments who need to rely on wireless communications during an emergency. Cellular networks do not work well if there is a major incident because the networks become saturated when there is a lot of traffic.

Each 800MHz radio is individually programmed to work in one or more talk groups, selectable by a dial. UCOP encouraged all of the UC campuses to buy compatible Motorola systems so that if there is an emergency at one campus staff from other campuses will be able to travel there to assist, and communicate with each other through a common channel. 800 MHz equipment is robust but expensive, and many people who don’t need the high redundancy and ability to work during an emergency have changed over to cellular phones especially the Nextel push-to-talk phones which offer many benefits of two-way radios.

The Police Department operates the 800MHz consoles. The existing consoles are now antiquated and Motorola does not support them any more. New 800MHz consoles will be purchased when the Police Department moves to their new building in 2005.

Number portability is now available for cellular networks. This will probably lead to increased use and lower prices. In particular, people can now transfer their land-line number to a cellular network, and many people will cancel their land-lines and rely solely on their cell phone. Most of the students who live on campus already use their cell phones instead of subscribing to Pacific Bell residential lines. Products are being developed which will allow a cell phone to be connected to a house’s existing phone wiring, so it can operate with multiple phone instruments just like a land-line.

3G networks will become more widespread as other providers follow the lead set by Verizon. Verizon and other networks using CDMA have an advantage because of the lower cost of deployment. In the near future, 3G services will be a strong competitor to cable modem and DSL connections, especially when cards which combine 802.11 and 3G become available. With these cards, users will connect to the faster 802.11 network when they are in an 802.11 "hot spot", and to the slower but widely available 3G network everywhere else. These dual mode cards will probably be built into the laptop computers of the future.

Will 3G services mean that people will not need to connect to 802.11 services at all? We do not think that this will be the case for the next two or three years because there is still a significant speed difference between 3G and 802.11 networks. At some stage in the future, 3G will be upgraded to higher and higher speeds, and there may well be a point when these speeds will, in theory, be fast enough for users not to care about wireless LANs. In practice, 3G networks are not typically engineered to provide the density of connections necessary in classrooms and other areas on campus.

These future public networks will be called 4G, and support multiple protocols. They will work with Bluetooth, 802.11, and other wireless technologies which will enable sessions to run over the best available connection option, at any given time. The 4G networks will also support Quality of Service (QoS), and adaptive spectral assignment, dynamically assigning frequencies and bandwidth to individuals based on the services requested.

The 802.11g WAPs and cards are now widely available. Although there are still problems operating a WAP in dual 802.11b/g mode, we think that 802.11g will be preferred over 802.11a because 802.11a utilizes signals at 5.4GHz that do not transmit well over a large area. Installing the high density of WAPs that is required with 802.11a is not cost effective, although 802.11a may have advantages in areas with a lot of traffic because it offers more bands than either 802.11b or 802.11g.

802.11b is still the workhorse technology in our network, and will continue to be so for the forseeable future. We will be selective about how and where we deploy 802.11g because we cannot afford to put it everywhere, even when it works. We will monitor our network and use 802.11g to provide more bandwidth where required.

Wireless 802.11b phones are now available. They are of limited, practical use because they only work in areas with 802.11 coverage. Researchers are interested in this technology because eventually it may be incorporated in multi-mode phones that will connect intelligently to multiple networks. Ericsson and UCSD's research community are both looking at the issues that arise when a multi-mode phone is in an area where it transitions from one type of network to another, and eventually such phones may become common on campus.

Wireless LANs will become faster as new standards are developed. An industry taskforce has already been formed to come up with 802.11n (which may be available by 2006 and operate at speeds of up to 100Mbps). 802.11n will probably be deployed in dual mode cards so that it can have some backward compatibility with the existing standards.

Will there ever be a stage where wireless LANs will remove the need for wired LAN connections? It's too early to say, and it probably won't happen within the next five years (the period of time we are looking at with this strategic plan). Wireless LANs will always use shared bandwidth and so have lesser throughput than wired connections. If wireless LANS are fast enough then this may not be an issue for the majority of users. Much will depend on future applications, and what network speeds and characteristics they will need. Another factor is user behavior as people may be willing to put up with the slower speeds in exchange for the advantages of mobility. This already happens, especially with faculty, and the trend will continue as the wireless network improves and expands. We know that there will always be wired connections, but in future buildings the amount of cabling infrastructure may decrease and the amount of wireless infrastructure may increase.

As mentioned previously, about 4G public networks, the future of wireless networking at UCSD will probably involve multi-protocol cards which can intelligently connect to the best and most cost effective network available. There will be a lot of interaction between the public networks and the private unlicensed ones. The next few years will be exciting and full of change.

Within the next year, location devices will be built into a wide variety of equipment so that they can be located, if lost. This radio frequency ID technology may be used at UCSD’s new Cal(IT)2 building to locate and keep track of certain valuable pieces of equipment. This is just one example of how wireless networking will grow and lead to new applications and solutions.

As mentioned above, new consoles will be purchased for the 800MHz system when the Police Department moves into its new building. We do not anticipate any major changes in UCSD’s 800MHz system over the next few years, but there may be some minor upgrades in order to improve coverage in some parts of the campus (such as the tunnels). 800MHz, as well as other wireless frequencies, can be transmitted via a "leaky" co-axial cable. We have already started using this technology in some parking structures, and we we may want to deploy it in more locations as a way of improving coverage.

Digital 800MHz systems are now available, and the FCC requires that all analog systems be phased out or upgraded to digital by 2025. It is unclear if the Office of the President will co-ordinate a systemwide upgrade. It is more likely that each campus will choose its own upgrade path, and there may be better options than purchasing our own digital system. The County of San Diego already has a digital system; the City of San Diego will install one when it has the funding to do so. UCSD will consider leasing digital 800MHz radios from one of these two entities as this may be much less expensive than buying our own. Another very important benefit would be fully integrated communications with the San Diego community's police and fire departments in an emergency. We have started discussions with the city and county on the possibility of joining with them in the future.

• Continue to emphasize expanding and managing the wireless LAN networks on campus, be pro-active in exploring new developments such as seamless roaming, and aim to be early adopters of new technology

• Test Avaya’s AP8s, and if all goes well, start installing 802.11g services where needed on campus

• Investigate "leaky" co-ax and other wireless distribution systems from companies such as Ericsson and Inner Wireless, as may be useful in improving coverage in areas where traditional wireless architectures do not work well.

• Encourage public cellular providers to improve their coverage on and around the campus, especially regarding levels of service on the 3G data networks

• Continue discussions with the city of San Diego and the county of San Diego regarding future plans for their digital 800MHz services

We have adopted wireless networking as part of the Next Generation Network. The technology was not part of the original NGN plan so finding the funds for it has been a challenge. We will soon start preparing for the next five-year cycle of the NGN. We must ensure that our plan covers not only the costs of installing wireless but also maintaining, upgrading and supporting it.

We recently reduced our billing rates for 800MHz. If some of the existing users decide to discontinue the service, and instead use push-to-talk cellular phones, we will need to readjust our rates to cover our operating costs.