March 4, 2008
AU emergency communications to be enhanced
AU has partnered with Rave Wireless, Sprint, and Datatel to beef up its emergency communications service.
The agreement, announced last Thursday, will enable all members of the AU community —no matter their cell phone provider—to receive SMS (short message service) text-based messages and alerts in case of a campus emergency. The plan also calls for press-to-talk radios, which will allow high-level administrators to communicate even when phone lines are congested.
With this service, which launches this summer, “American University is taking action to help address our emergency communications and to better serve the information needs of our students and campus community,” said President Neil Kerwin.
According to David Swartz, assistant vice president and chief information officer, “the extensive infrastructure upgrades will place AU among an elite group of universities that support comprehensive in-building cell phone antennas for several of the main vendors, including Sprint Nextel, AT&T/Cingular, and T-Mobile.”
The emergency communications are just the first phase of a broader initiative to deliver a menu of service through cell phones, said Swartz.
“The project will progress to include a wide array of useful information services for users of Sprint Nextel phones, such as shuttle bus tracking, access to Blackboard for assignments, social networking among student groups, and so on,” he explained.
Eventually, students will be able to use their phones to order everything, from textbooks to a pizza, online, Swartz added.
