Episode 08 – Student Wi-Fi

Charlotte
Hi, and welcome to the latest episode of In the Thick of It. And I’m here today with some really interesting guests, so I’m gonna get to introduce themselves in a moment. But we’re here today to talk about student Wi-Fi. For any of those of you watching who have children at university, as I do, you’ll know what a problem that can be.

But before we jump in, I’m gonna get you guys to introduce yourself if you want to go first.

Tim Ormrod
Wonderful. Thank you very much. My name is Tim Ormrod. I’m the owner and director of a company called Splash Access, and we specialise in student Wi-Fi.

Charlotte
Excellent.

So you’re gonna have a lot to say

Tim Ormrod
Oh, yeah.

Charlotte
Which is good. Hi.

Wayne Martin
And I’m Wayne Martin. I’m the head of the enterprise networks practice, and I’ve been working in Wi-Fi and enterprise networks for some twenty odd years.

Laura Powell
Nice. Hi, I’m Laura Powell.

I’m a client director, and I head up our education sector practice.

Charlotte
Nice. Excellent. So I think it’s really nice, actually, because I think you’re all going to bring a slightly different perspective to the story, if you like. So I think let’s just jump right in there because, as I said, as a parent of someone who’s at uni, I know what how difficult this can be.

So why do students still struggle so much in their halls of residence and in their accommodation with Wi-Fi? Wayne, I know you wanted to jump in.

Wayne Martin
So there’s multiple reasons for this. We’ll cover a few one by one. So the first one is normally coverage. So we find with a lot of student accommodation, the universities tend to put their access points or their wireless access devices in the corridors outside student rooms, which leads to a couple of problems.

So you get good coverage in some rooms and really poor coverage in other rooms, in other areas of the actual accommodation. The problem there is that student a in one room is getting great Wi-Fi and is really pleased with it. Student b in second room is getting terrible Wi-Fi and isn’t. So it causes that friction.

That’s the first problem. So coverage is a bit of an issue.

The second part is students are more often than not bringing other devices with them apart from just a laptop. So they’re bringing their games consoles, their PlayStations, their Xboxes. They wanna bring things like TVs so they can stream Netflix and YouTube and other kind of programs. They’re also bringing things like printers and smart devices like Amazon Alexa as an example.

And because of that, it’s really complicated to get them to connect to the network and only be able to discover their own devices. So Tim’s company has been working to develop stuff that I’m sure you’ll go into a little bit later that helps us to resolve some of these problems, which has caused IT lots of issues of maintaining the security whilst giving the service that the students need.

Right. So do they end up not giving them access, or do they of do they give them access but everyone can see each other’s devices?

That’s something I’ve never even That is that is kind of a problem.

So if you think about public Wi-Fi in, say, a coffee shop, that’s great for a single device where you can stop other users. So if you’ve ten people connected in a coffee shop, you don’t want them to be able to see each other’s devices, obviously, for security, and you don’t want them to be able to discover them.

But in a student accommodation, you want multiple devices. You want the PlayStations. You want the printers.

So it’s bit binary. Laptops.

Yeah. So you want them to be able to see all of their own devices. But if it’s a shared Wi-Fi, they can also see everybody else’s. So that’s the problem.

Because if you go to search for your Alexa, you see ten Alexas. Which one’s yours? Where are you going to stream to? If you stream to the wrong one, suddenly another student in another room gets a request to connect to their Alexa, etcetera.

So it’s a bit of a problem.

Laura Powell
One of the main problems is, like me, not everybody is technically competent.

So this really is a barrier when it comes to devices and wanting to connect how you connect at home. So simply connecting at home to your home Wi-Fi broadband, it’s very simple. You get password, you’re discovering your devices in your own area, and you’re not getting any interference outside with other people’s devices because you’re in that in that private space.

So from that technical competency, that’s what’s expected when they get to these environments specifically. What we’re talking about today is the halls of residence, which is which is where these students are looking to connect.

Charlotte
Yeah. And I suppose bandwidth must be an issue too because of I guess that comes down to the coverage in your first point.

It it can absolutely be. I mean, my son at university, when he went to uni, he was in a halls of residence, and there was one access point in a corridor shared between eight people in a flat. A couple of the people had great Wi-Fi, but they were not particularly people who wanted Wi-Fi. The one person who had the worst coverage in the whole of the flat was the one that was a gamer.

And it’s typical that he just happened to have such bad coverage, and it just causes that friction.

Tim Ormrod
And I think students now, the expectation is Wi-Fi has to be good.

Charlotte
Yeah. Well, because I want to download a game, and I don’t want to wait three days for that to happen.

Tim Ormrod
And the expectation’s good, and they are very vocal if they don’t get that good experience.

Laura Powell
I was going was going add, one of the main things that the universities are struggling with is the results from the surveys. So these NSS surveys and other surveys, of course, that are issued out, And it still, to this day, remains one of the main priorities for students is wireless and their experience of wireless in those environments. As a paying student, their expectations are very high. Yeah. So that is a continual battle for these universities to deliver the expectation for their paying clients Yeah. In this scenario whilst balancing network operational requirements and of course, most importantly, security.

Charlotte
Yeah. Yeah. So so what and, again, I am going off script. I warned you I’d do this.

So, again, what are the what are the options for them? You know? So you mentioned that Tim’s company is looking at how to change this. So what are the options for the university?

Because, obviously, budgets are gonna be an issue, I suspect.

Tim Ormrod
Traditionally, the universities use MAC address bypass. And their expectation was the student would find the MAC address of the device, enter that into a portal, blank splash access, and then we would authorise the student onto the network. And that works, but you’ve got a certain expectation that the student understands what a MAC address is.

Charlotte
Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Ormrod
And then how to get the MAC address. And I think what you were saying before is the students are bringing all these devices in, IoT devices, smaller devices, cameras, Alexas, all these devices that actually, the MAC address is quite hard to find.

Laura Powell
Yeah. Just going back to that technical competency piece. Correct.

Tim Ormrod
Yeah.

Laura Powell
It’s not an easy thing.

Charlotte
And it causes lots of problems as well with the IT team where they’re getting support calls for help. How do I find? I’ve got a Google Nest device. Where do I find a MAC address? I’ve got a Google Nest at home, and I’m quite technical. So I know the places to look, and it still took me ten minutes to find out where the MAC address is.

Laura Powell
Yeah. Yeah.

Charlotte
And then you got things like iPhones and Samsung phones and Android phones.

If you’re connected to Wi-Fi, the Wi-Fi on those devices randomises the MAC address. So unless you turn that off, next time you go to connect to the Wi-Fi, your MAC address is changing. It doesn’t So not only do you have to work out where the MAC address is, you will have to learn how to turn the MAC address randomisation off, which just causes help desk calls, causes problems.

Tim Ormrod
Yeah. Minimise the friction for the student to get online, reducing the support calls. And that’s the most important factor.

Charlotte
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. I can imagine because support would have to have a huge amount of knowledge in order to support all of those devices.

Whereas if you can fix the access issues, that kinda makes that a bit more

Laura Powell
Not to mention the overhead.

Charlotte
Yes. Small teams.

Laura Powell
Yeah. And you touched on it a moment ago around the financial stability of universities currently. Mhmm. It’s well known from the, you know, the press. Yeah.

These universities are really struggling. They’re competing on a global scale to attract these students in the first place. And when they’re there, they have to give an exceptional experience whilst minimising the cost to their businesses, which is what these big institutions are.

Charlotte
Well, yeah. And I and from what you were all saying about that student expectation, then that influences how they review the university, and then that influences what other students come, especially international. Yes.

Tim Ormrod
That vocal students. Yeah. Going online and they, you know, vocally saying the Wi-Fi’s poor at this campus hasn’t not been affected. And you know the power of the Internet. Students do their research.

Charlotte
They do.

Tim Ormrod
They if they see that the student accommodation hasn’t got good Wi-Fi

Charlotte
Mhmm.

Tim Ormrod
They say that little x in the box.

Charlotte
Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s top of the list, isn’t it? Because as you say, especially if they’re a gamer or, you know, or if they’re doing a course where it’s really important for them to be able to be online a lot of the time.

Okay. So talk about where it’s working. I think that’s a good place to start. You know, where is it working? Where is it?

And why is it working? You know, where are the situations where they’ve got it right?

So there’s we’ll cover as we started with the coverage thing is obviously an issue. So if you don’t have enough access points or too many access points in some cases, the Wi-Fi doesn’t work properly. So where we found it really works well is where we have an individual access point in every student room. Obviously, that has a cost to it. But with those access points per room, what we can do is we can guarantee the coverage for the user in that room. We can also provide some fixed Ethernet ports, so some wired connections for things like games consoles. So those high demand devices are not using the Wi-Fi.

This is the benefit of providing that great coverage, the flexibility of connectivity, But we still have that issue if it’s a shared Wi-Fi environment.

So what we’re looking for is a home from home experience, something as simple as connecting to Wi-Fi at home. Every kid I know knows how to connect to Wi-Fi. In fact, my kids will never go to a restaurant anywhere, Dad, can you get the Wi-Fi code? They all know how to connect to Wi-Fi. They all know there’s a code, which is a pre shared key effectively. So if we could have a pre shared key that would tie that student to a private little Wi-Fi network that only they and their devices connect to on a shared infrastructure, that would be great. And that’s where Tim’s company comes in.

Tim Ormrod
Absolutely. And I think we started the project with Cisco probably around about four and a half, five years ago. And we were very fortunate and very lucky to work with Cisco directly with their product team in San Francisco to develop IPSK, which is that individual preshed key, to allow students to connect and then give them their isolation bubble so they can literally only see and communicate with their own devices. So it’s what all the campuses have been looking for years, The home away from home network Yeah.

Simplified access, and we can also now tie it into the ports on the bottom of the ports on the devices. So we can do the segmentation to the wired as well as the wireless. Yeah. So they’re getting the best of both worlds.

Laura Powell
From an operational point of view, management, IT management point of view, that provides better insights to those teams to simplify troubleshooting for individuals. Right?

Tim Ormrod
Absolutely. So every time a student connects with an individual key, we can allocate their student ID to each individual device. So we’re not reliant on the MAC address, which changes all the time now. We’ve got the ID attached to the physical device. So accountability. Yeah.

Charlotte
Yeah. And managing resource and bandwidth, I guess, across the infrastructure because you’ll get to know, obviously, once a student moves in and they’ve got a certain number of devices, they either are or aren’t a gamer. So you can probably start to be a bit more predictable in how the network is managed from a traffic point of view.

Tim Ormrod
Yeah. You’ve got full visibility. And I think that’s the important thing from the IT team. They want to know who, what, when is doing what. Yeah. And, you know, the solution does give you that flexibility.

Charlotte
I have

Laura Powell
a really good user case actually.

We’re working with a university in the UK who have invested in this solution. And one of their user cases was that they have identified before they’ve even joined the university a number of blind students.

The importance of those particular students being able to get their specific devices onto that network is critical to their learning environment and also their home from home environment.

Charlotte
And making them consistently available.

Laura Powell
Absolutely.

So from that management perspective, being able to identify those students and those devices and being able to onboard them seamlessly is absolutely pivotal to that university from a well-being point of view to ensure that they’re safeguarded, that they’re supported through their journey.

And we were able to do that with this with this solution.

Charlotte
I love that. I love I love those sort of unusual use cases.

So that so in that scenario and in others, is it being used at scale? Is it still quite niche in terms of is it something that’s, I guess, widely adoptable, if that makes sense?

Tim Ormrod
I think it is widely. I mean, as a company, SplashAccess, we’ve got probably around about sixty five, seventy university campuses globally Mhmm. Utilising the solution.

And I think the interesting thing is now is the UK market is picking up on it, and working with the team here, you know, we’re fast deploying the solution, which is solving a lot of problems.

Laura Powell
Yeah. Yeah. It’s hugely competitive amongst the universities. Whilst the universities are competing for students, first and foremost, to get bums on seats into their establishments, they’re looking at how they do that and being able to advertise their universities with a service that attracts those students on a platform that they know they can they understand, which is our Wi-Fi is great.

This is what it will deliver for you, is hugely beneficial. So we’ve seen a university in the UK look proactively at another university up the road as to what they’re doing who had installed this particular solution. And they proactively contacted us to talk about that solution because they want to deliver the same thing better to that. And put that personalisation around that, which is what we absolutely can do as well with the flexibility of the technology.

Tim Ormrod
And I think the other interesting thing, that particular instance, we had actually reduced support tickets by eighty five percent.

Charlotte
Wow.

Tim Ormrod
So going back to the support aspect. Yeah. You know, the campuses, their IT teams are being stretched more and more and more. So having a solution which actually reduced tickets is a big benefit for them.

Charlotte
Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. So even though it’s an investment upfront, and like you say, in the extra Yeah.

Point access points that you have, that would probably be quite quickly offset by those sorts of savings. Absolutely.

Laura Powell
And these are the types of things that when we’re engaging with our clients, that we thoroughly go through qualifying with our clients so that they understand the investment that they’re making and the different touch points of that solution, how that’s gonna help benefit. We can, you know, we can also widen this conversation out into the Smart Campus technology.

Some of the investments around the access points provide additional environmental capabilities. So this will offset things in the estates budgets as well as the point solution, which is deliver wireless. Also we’re also answering other requirements of the university through the same solution. So therefore, we’re engaging other areas of those universities so that we’re heightening this investment for the wider good, which has been hugely beneficial in our conversations as a consultative partner.

Charlotte
Yeah. Because I guess you get you get economies of scale in that way, don’t you? Because I know as well you can layer security over it for staff members, for example, as they go through different areas in the university or have access to different types of systems and things, can layer all that over it as well, which would help.

Tim Ormrod
There’s a lot of different aspects now.

Charlotte
Yeah.

So

Laura Powell
the opportunity is almost endless.

Yeah. We look at, again, one of the universities that we’ve engaged with, the baseline solution, which is deliver wireless to my students in this environment, started off as that conversation, and now we’re looking into the cameras that are available from a physical security point of view. Who’s accessing in these environments, and how does that then trigger certain departments within the university? This is all within this solution capability portfolio.

Tim Ormrod
And I think the other thing now is the manufacturers are designing these access points to add on IoT devices.

Charlotte
Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Ormrod
So as Flash Access is developing, we’re adding in the functions so students can pick up temperature sensors, door sensors, button sensors. So we’re elevating their investment Yeah. And giving them the opportunity to add on as they’re moving along.

Charlotte
Mhmm. And and you can overlay a lot of security around that as well because it’s in this sort of centralized infrastructure, which is really good because it those, like you say, those IoT points can be a weak point for security, but managing it in this way really helps bolster that security element too.

Laura Powell
There’s two lenses from security. Right? You’ve got a technical lens, which is the internal insight as to what is this solution delivering, and how do we protect our assets, our devices, our students whilst they’re engaging with this solution. And then there’s that physical, you know, student security.

Yeah. The well-being of that student in that environment is, you know, how are they engaging, communicating with the services of the university? Yeah. How are they calling home?

How are they being onboarded as a as an individual into that university? And this is absolutely the blueprint to enable all of those conversations.

Charlotte
Yeah.

Because then how are they engaging with learning and with the social And

Laura Powell
yeah.

Charlotte
Oh, I really like that.

I’m gonna put you all on the spot now just a little bit as we come close to wrapping up because I’m really loving this. And as I say, because of my daughter, it sort of quite hits home. But if so could each of you give so let’s say there’s a university. They know they’ve got a problem. They don’t really know where to start. Could each of you give them a point of where can they start?

We start really with the student and what they expect from their connectivity when they’re in halls of residence. So we talked about things like gamers, we talked to students that might not necessarily really care too much about Wi-Fi so there are a mix. But often when students are in a room they’ve got to have equal coverage across the rooms. You can’t have four students in a flat having great Wi-Fi and the other four having terrible Wi-Fi because they do notice very quickly that someone’s got great service and someone hasn’t and they’re all paying exactly the same amount of money per month, which is usually quite a lot for this room.

Yeah.

Laura Powell
So it’s understanding the building, it’s understanding the student requirements.

The buildings one university described to me that their student accommodation was like Lego bricks made out of concrete that they kind of stick together in blocks. And because of the way the buildings are constructed, Wi-Fi in corridors means that it doesn’t penetrate the rooms very well.

Right.

So some students get bad coverage. So we always start with doing some predictive surveys to try and work out how many access points, where they’d best suit.

There are options to put them in corridors or in adjacent rooms, etcetera, but it’s never gonna give the same experiences of the access in the room.

Each room because you can’t give that connectivity, the Ethernet connectivity Yeah. For the PlayStations and the games consoles and that kind of thing. So it is a balance. But then we’re always constrained by what a budget might be. Yeah.

Tim Ormrod
Because we don’t only have to look at the number of access points, but we have to look at things like cabling, Ethernet switches, power over Ethernet, all of those kind of things that we have to work out.

But from that, can provide a picture Yeah. Of what a scenario would cost to provide a service to a student. And ultimately, it comes down to what the student experience is gonna be. Yeah. And lots of units we speak to get poor results from student Wi-Fi in the halls of residence because they’re not working properly.

Yeah.

So coverage is a really good place

Laura Powell
to a

Tim Ormrod
state.

The design is critical. Yeah. I think that’s the starting point. Yeah. Every single project that we go into, the design has to be right.

Mhmm. Yeah. Because what Splash Access won’t work properly if the design isn’t met.

Charlotte
Yeah.

Tim Ormrod
So once the design’s been done, I think from our side, we know we start keeping things simple. We like to keep things simple. Don’t overcomplicate it. Yeah.

Like you said before, students have different aspects, different levels of competence. Mhmm. And what we try to do is make it as easy as possible. Yeah.

So from a splash access point of view, we interface with the campus identity providers. So whether they’re using Azure, Google, or SAML, we integrate with that to make it that seamless onboarding the student understands. Yeah. Same login terms.

Charlotte
Yeah. Just to keep it really simple.

Tim Ormrod
Thing that we haven’t talked about is housing systems. Mhmm. Because SplashAccess does now integrate with various different housing systems. So, again, what we’re doing is understanding the onboarding, but also how long a particular student is in a location in a room.

Charlotte
Of course. Yeah.

Tim Ormrod
And then what we can do is that we can remove their details once they’ve left. So we’re doing the onboarding, but we can now automate and do the offboarding as well, which is just as critical.

Charlotte
Just as critical. And I guess, so that sort of design element as well really helps the university to understand what they don’t know. Yep. Because that’s often what undoes you, doesn’t it, in designing something like this is like you say, okay. We want coverage. It sounds obvious to say, well, we’ll just put loads of access points in.

But if the design’s not there, then it’s more

Tim Ormrod
than what you said before.

You can go over the top and put too many access points in.

And if the design’s not right on the Wi-Fi network

Charlotte
Just brings in another problem.

Laura Powell
So for me, it’s simplicity. I’ve Mhmm. Touched on it a couple of times in the conversation because that for me is what I am. Yeah.

I’m not a technical person. I understand the barriers because I lift the barriers every day. Yep. Wayne, I contact on a regular basis about my own home Wi-Fi and what, you know, these things.

Charlotte
I’ve got your email

Laura Powell
now, so I’ll be in touch.

For a student, and let’s talk about first year students as an example. Mhmm.

These most often or not are students for the first time away from home

Charlotte
Mhmm.

Laura Powell
In a new city, possibly a new country entirely Mhmm. Into their halls of residence environment, which is completely alien to them, making them comfortable and confident from the day one is absolutely a university’s priority. Yeah.

And if that means that they’re able to get on that wireless network to connect their gaming because that’s what makes them Or talk

Charlotte
to their family, you know?

Absolutely.

Talk

Laura Powell
to their family, connect home, exchange those the Wi-Fi call in or whatever that might be.

The simplicity of being able to do that is absolutely the priority. So removing those barriers of technology to collaboration or gaming or whatever that is absolutely the priority. And as working with those universities around that messaging to that student body is a priority for us.

Understanding how we can help them with hand, you

Charlotte
know,

Laura Powell
handbooks, user guides, or podcasts, whatever that might be, to ensure that those students are adopting that new environment as seamlessly as possible.

Charlotte
Yeah. And that’s one of the things I was really looking forward to with this conversation was that blend of the technology with the human humanity of it because, you know, these are real people we’re talking about. And like you say, first year students, they’re in a really foreign environment on a number of levels, and it’s easy to underestimate, I think, how scary that can be.

It might be a

Laura Powell
Daunting.

Yep. Daunting.

In a different country, let alone a different city.

Charlotte
And I love what you said about really working close in partnership around that. And I and it’s I know we said we were close to the end, but I think it would be really helpful, I think, for the audience to understand. Obviously, what we’ve talked about is putting in new tech, putting in modern platforms, or all of that infrastructure. So what if they’re in an environment where they’re quite happy with what they’ve got for the most part and they want to make these types of changes?

So we have a couple of universities that have got an investment in room access points already, which are the old Cisco Catalyst versions.

Now they won’t run on the cloud managed service, which is what was Meraki, just rapidly becoming just cloud managed with Cisco.

They can’t be converted, so they can’t run on the Meraki platform, which means they can’t run on the platform we’ve been talking about. Okay.

Now some of those clients have got these APs in place, they’re not in the life yet so they’re not at the position to replace them. So they’ve been coming to us and saying, so what can we do to solve the problem that we’ve got? Because that solution today requires MAC address registration which covers all those same problems we’ve already discussed. Mhmm. Getting the MAC address of a device registered on a platform becomes complex, becomes difficult, becomes lots of help desk calls.

So Tim and I have had conversations around an approach, and I’m sure Tim could cover it in more detail than I can about how we how we make this kind of student experience platform work in those traditional Catalyst environments where we’re stuck at the moment with legacy access points in there.

Tim Ormrod
Mhmm. I think that’s the he said, you know, Cisco America has come along, and they’ve changed the market with IPSK and WPN. IPSK and WPN solves the problem that everybody’s been looking for, home away from home. And you’re right. How can we do exactly the same thing on Catalyst? So around about three, four years ago, I actually went to Colorado, and I was doing an education event, one of the biggest education events. And a young gentleman there I did a presentation on IPSK and WPM, and a young gentleman from the Utah University came to us and said, that’s exactly what we need on Catalyst.

Help. Yeah. Because we need to get this to work on Catalyst controllers. And I said, no, we only work with IPSK on WPN on Meraki.

But we kept in touch. We went, had a few beers. Yeah. And six months later, we had a working solution that solved part of the problem. Yeah. And we deployed that solution, which was integration into ICE, which is an authentication back end system for Catalyst. So we have got a working solution, but it has got that little problem of we need the MAC address.

Charlotte
Right.

Tim Ormrod
So for the past, I would say, year, we’ve been working very closely with Cisco and the team to develop a solution that solves that problem. And we’re pleased to say we’ve actually done it now. Yeah.

Amazingly, we’ve now managed to do exactly what we’ve been doing on Meraki

Charlotte
Mhmm.

Tim Ormrod
On top of the Catalyst controllers using a feature called EasyPSK. Nice. Yeah.

Charlotte
So Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And that must be quite exciting for the industry.

Tim Ormrod
It is. It’s very exciting.

Charlotte
Because it’s not just universities.

Tim Ormrod
Is. You know? There’s a lot of opportunity and a lot of scope on this because we’re providing that home away from home network.

Charlotte
Mhmm.

Tim Ormrod
But if you’ve got the Catalyst controllers now, we can solve that problem.

Charlotte
I was just thinking as well, thinking about access, and we’ve talked a lot about student experience.

But what we haven’t touched on and, I know I said we’d wrap up this podcast shortly, but it’s just very interesting. But we haven’t touched on is that academic side. You know, what does it mean from them?

They they have the great experience from a home away from home, but what does that mean from the academic experience that they have?

Laura Powell
I guess in the day and age that we’re living in now that we are really in this hybrid world where the expectation of learning doesn’t have to be in one place. And if a student chooses to stay in halls on a morning and doesn’t want to take themselves across to the campus for that particular lecture or class or whatever is on over at the campus, that we are removing those barriers to that physical in body attendance by enabling that wireless experience in the comfort of their own environment and still being able to attend those classes remotely. By supporting that with good wireless is absolutely critical to the universities from an attendance point of view.

Because whether they’re there in person or whether they’re there in online Yeah. They’re still there. Right? Mhmm.

They’re still learning. They’re still achieving, which is absolutely, again, a priority for the university that they’re obtaining the grades, the attendance that they need to be whilst they’re at university.

Charlotte
Yeah. Yeah. And then that places a load a big load because it’s like live video streaming, I’m assuming.

So is that

Laura Powell
or actually the norm now.

Yeah. Especially, and I hate I hate to talk about that era that we’re in, which was COVID. Right? Mhmm. Post COVID, which is absolutely what we’re living in now. The expectation of I don’t have to be somewhere Yeah. Is embodied in all of us.

Charlotte
Right? Mhmm.

Laura Powell
We don’t physically have to be anywhere to achieve things these days. So from a student point of view, whilst they’re enjoying that campus experience, they’re here, they’re learning, they choose when they’re in the campus or off the campus. But regardless of where they are, they’re able to connect and consume that information.

Charlotte
Yeah.

So they’re not compromising on their learning just because they want to stay in their It comes down to that point that we discussed earlier around the coverage and the quality of the Wi-Fi in the rooms.

Yeah. If you’ve got half the people in a flat that can remotely learn and you have half that can’t because Wi-Fi is not good enough, it looks terrible.

Yeah.

It looks terrible because they very quickly discovered that their roommate their roommate next door Mhmm.

Can do lectures Yeah. From their room and they can’t.

Laura Powell
And they can’t.

Charlotte
Wi-Fi is not good enough.

Tim Ormrod
And they will vocalize it online.

Laura Powell
Oh, Of course they will.

Charlotte
Yeah. Definitely.

Well, great. Thank you, guys. I feel like that was really interesting. I feel like we covered a lot of different areas, which was really good.

I feel like we might be able to fit a part two in at

Laura Powell
some point.

Charlotte
But thank you so much, and I hope you all learned something too. And we’ll see you on the next episode.