Flagler College selects Alcatel-Lucent’s wireless network to provide advanced technologies in its historic buildings

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced it has been selected to deploy a secure wireless local area network (WLAN) at Flagler College, located in St. Augustine, FL, in order to protect the integrity of the college’s historic buildings.

Located four miles from the Atlantic Ocean, St. Augustine is the oldest European settlement in the United States. On the campus of Flagler College reside some of the oldest buildings on the grounds of a higher education institution in North America. The main building, Ponce de Leon Hall, was built in the 1800s and is a National Historic Landmark.

The College selected wireless networking to offer advanced technology services to its over 2,500 users while protecting the national historic landmarks that make up the campus. “Flagler has pledged the preservation and use of these historic and architecturally-unique campus structures. As a result, wireless local area networking (WLAN) is a great option for us,” said Joe Provenza, director of Technology Services at Flagler. “We are installing WiFi all over the campus including the dormitories, our library, and more, to give students and faculty secure access with the most modern wireless technologies available. The 700-plus students in the dorms won’t need to use their own wireless access equipment, making it easier and cheaper for them, and taking away some of the security management headache for us.”

Flagler College selected Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess WLAN switches and access points to cover the campus which extends across five city blocks. “We chose Alcatel-Lucent because we have a very open campus and their access controls were the best for security, easiest to manage, and easiest for the user that we could find,” added Provenza. “The other features of the product also stacked up well against the competition.”

“Today’s higher education networks are becoming differentiating factors and represent one way in which universities are transforming the overall user experiences and creating greater satisfaction among students,” said Hubert de Pesquidoux, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s enterprise activities. “When students consider a university for their higher education, they expect a high level of technology to be in place as part of the way a university prepares them for the future. While embracing the future is essential, preserving the past is also an important endeavor which can be done in part through the use of the latest wireless solutions that provide secure and reliable accessibility while at the same time keeping historic treasures intact.”