Campuses Ready Their Wireless Infrastructure for the Future
A Q&A with Cisco’s Gary DePreta
For colleges and universities today, updating the campus wireless infrastructure is no longer a matter of making a few select technical upgrades. To deliver on the promise of emerging technologies and fulfill the operational expectations of a modern university constituency, forward-looking IT leaders are making plans to modernize their networks — from the ground up, and for the future.
Institutions now plan for multi-year, full modernizations of the campus wireless infrastructure. These plans not only bring the speed and capabilities of the latest in Wi-Fi; they bring to campus a future-ready state that can respond quickly to a wave of AI-driven applications, or the proliferation of new BYOD devices that saturate bandwidth, or the explosive growth of data repositories generated by novel research programs.
Whatever is coming, universities aim to be ready to turn new technologies and practices into opportunities for innovation and ultimately, ROI on the institution’s investment in wireless infrastructure.
Here, we talk with Gary DePreta, Cisco’s senior vice president of U.S. public sector, about wireless infrastructure modernization and a study just released by Cisco (April, 2026) that helps strategists understand the impacts of radical changes in the wireless ecosystem.
Mary Grush: Thank you for speaking with us today about modernizing wireless infrastructure for higher education.
Gary DePreta: It’s good to be here… happy to do it. As you and your readers may know, Mary, we’ve just published our inaugural report on The State of Wireless. My chat here with you is the first conversation I’m having externally about this fantastic research report from Cisco.
Grush: Let’s begin with a question that’s central to campus strategies in today’s highly connected learning environments.
Campus environments are seeing increased demand from hybrid learning, connected devices, and innovative applications for instruction, administration, and research. How are these trends reshaping wireless infrastructure requirements in higher education?
DePreta: We all see a lot of dynamics around wireless infrastructure for education, but the key thing schools are realizing now is to respond to this not as another technology upgrade, but as a true network modernization for the entire campus. That’s the mindset that’s going to deliver ROI, ultimately.
Grush: So colleges and universities have upgraded their networks throughout the years, but it sounds like today it’s different. New opportunities and escalating demands point to comprehensive change.
DePreta: Yes. But keep in mind that even with the full-scale modernizations that would solve some of these issues and support many innovations technically, it’s important to understand that at the end of the day, we want to deliver a super-positive experience for students, faculty, administrators, and researchers. It’s not about the technology or tools; it’s about delivering the best experience possible.
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