Schools Ready Their Wireless Infrastructure for the Future
A Q&A with Cisco’s Gary DePreta
For colleges and universities today, upgrading the campus wireless infrastructure is no longer a matter of making a few choose technical upgrades. To provide on the promise of emerging innovations and fulfill the operational expectations of a modern-day university constituency, positive IT leaders are making strategies to improve their networks– from the ground up, and for the future.
< img height="429"alt="Illustration of school building with cordless symbol"width= "644"src ="https://campustechnology.com/-/media/EDU/CampusTechnology/2026/04/20260413ModernizingwirelessOrig.jpg"/ > Organizations now prepare for multi-year, complete modernizations of the school wireless infrastructure. These plans not just bring the speed and abilities of the most recent in Wi-Fi; they bring to campus a future-ready state that can respond rapidly to a wave of AI-driven applications, or the expansion of new BYOD devices that fill bandwidth, or the explosive growth of information repositories produced by novel research programs.
Whatever is coming, universities intend to be all set to turn new innovations and practices into chances for development and ultimately, ROI on the organization’s financial investment in wireless infrastructure.
Here, we talk with Gary DePreta, Cisco’s senior vice president of U.S. public sector, about cordless infrastructure modernization and a research study just launched by Cisco (April, 2026) that helps strategists comprehend the effects of radical changes in the cordless ecosystem.
Mary Grush: Thank you for speaking with us today about modernizing wireless facilities for higher education.
Gary DePreta: It’s excellent to be here … happy to do it. As you and your readers might understand, Mary, we have actually simply released our inaugural report on The State of Wireless. My chat here with you is the first conversation I’m having externally about this wonderful research report from Cisco.
Grush: Let’s start with a concern that’s main to school techniques in today’s extremely linked knowing environments.
School environments are seeing increased need from hybrid knowing, connected devices, and innovative applications for direction, administration, and research study. How are these trends reshaping wireless infrastructure requirements in college?
DePreta: We all see a great deal of dynamics around cordless facilities for education, however the key thing schools are realizing now is to react to this not as another innovation upgrade, however as a true network modernization for the entire campus. That’s the state of mind that’s going to provide ROI, eventually.
Grush: So colleges and universities have upgraded their networks throughout the years, however it sounds like today it’s various. New opportunities and intensifying demands indicate detailed modification.
DePreta: Yes. However keep in mind that even with the full-blown modernizations that would resolve a few of these concerns and support numerous innovations technically, it is necessary to understand that at the end of the day, we wish to deliver a super-positive experience for trainees, professors, administrators, and researchers. It’s not about the technology or tools; it’s about providing the best experience possible.