It’s About Time…

Last week the University of Winnipeg announced its partnership with telecom giant Telus to help improve some of the technological downfalls of our university. You know, like our painfully slow Wi-Fi and ancient computers around campus.

This merger means that we’ll finally have the funding to provide U of W students with adequate technology. For underprivileged students who can’t afford a computer at home, working on the ones in the library must be hell. They’re slow, outdated and their blurry screens irritate your eyes.

This is what the dean of the library Jane Duffy was trying to fix by cutting the library’s book budget to buy new computers and three state of the art work pods. Since the Telus partnership was just announced, will the library still be cutting book budgets to replace their computers?

It seems to me that the $150,000 coming from Telus should be used mostly to upgrade the library’s computers, as there are constant lines to access them. Duffy even told me that she’s seen faculty members in those lines with students, having to suffer through the tedious process of working on a ten year old machine.

Maybe now that Telus has promised this money, the library won’t have to cut book budgets and the departments who are protesting the cuts (history, among others) will get their funding back. Hopefully.

Along with the money, Telus will provide their extensive experience in telecommunications and their vast resources. With Cisco’s donation of hardware for Telepresence systems for the university, we’ll be able to use Telus’s Wi-Fi and other networks to hold virtual meetings from around the world.

Speaking of Wi-Fi, the university is installing a second router in November to accommodate students’ demands. Now your browser won’t freeze when trying to access Hotmail or Facebook in class.

The second router comes after a wave of Wi-Fi problems within the past few years. The current system just couldn’t support the ever growing demand for internet accessibility. Having Telus’s network along with our own will ensure the new buildings on campus receive adequate internet services and potentially enable students to access the U of W’s Wi-Fi from their own homes.

Telus is in talks with U of W administration to allow the university’s network to use Telus’s current Wi-Fi base, which reaches the entire city. At an extra fee, a student could use Telus’s services instead of having to pay for wireless in their own house.

I’m glad to see the U of W leave the dark ages, and hopefully with Telus as our partner we will see them test some innovative technological experiments to improve our campus’s technology.