Georgia is making sure to have the LAN ready to go for the NCAA tennis championships in May. From the release...
"Providing high-performance Wi-Fi at the Tennis Complex is a key element to creating the best possible experience for the over one hundred press personnel expected at this year's NCAA Championships," said Jeff Daniel, IT director of operations & infrastructure at UGA Athletics.
Shortly after that statement, the release goes on to explain a lot about how the LAN works. I had a hard time reading through all of that. I consider myself to be fairly technical, but I got totally lost reading this thing. Anywho, I finally stumbled onto this near the end...
Beyond the tennis and training complex, the Extricom wireless LAN is slated to cover Sanford Stadium (football), Stegeman Coliseum (basketball), and Foley Field (baseball).
This got me thinking. Will the fans be able to use this LAN during sporting events at the venues? I figured the answer was no, but I went ahead and went straight to the source. I asked Jeff Daniel, Director of Information Technology - Operations and Infrastructure for the UGA Athletic Association. Here is the response I got from him.
Currently we are not planning on providing internet access to fans at our venues. Our current focus is on servicing our press corps with wireless needs as well as providing an effective mechanism of allowing physical access into our venues via ticket scanning. Although with technology, things could change. At which point, we would reassess things.
So, to answer the question in the headline, the LAN doesn't mean anything to fans at this point. But who knows, maybe some day we'll be able to access the internet and check stats and such over the internet via a wi-fi LAN during games. Call me a nerd, but I think that would be cool.
NERD!
ReplyDeletegood reporting though!