SAN JOSE, CA and BASKING RIDGE, NJ -- (Marketwire) -- 11/02/09 -- Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Verizon Business announced today that Purdue University is deploying a pervasive, campus-wide, high-performance wireless network to enhance the collaborative learning experience for students. This transformative deployment will help drive student success and create tomorrow's leaders by enabling Purdue's 51,000 students and faculty to access the university's next generation of mobile collaborative technologies and applications -- many of which include video and voice over IP.

With completion expected during the 2010-2011 school year, Verizon Business is building and deploying the industry's leading 802.11n wireless network solution, a Cisco Unified Wireless Network that includes more than 6,000 802.11n wireless access points in 256 buildings across Purdue University's West Lafayette campus.

Key Facts/Highlights:

• Cisco's 802.11n wireless network with Cisco M-Drive technology offers greater performance and lower operational cost for pervasive wireless connectivity to support bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications. Supported by the Cisco Motion vision to connect devices and people, the 802.11n wireless network will be the wireless foundation of a truly borderless mobility experience with high-speed, reliable wireless capacity and coverage. In addition, it will optimize connections for a wave of mobile devices entering the university campus, like laptops, netbooks and dual-mode smart phones.
• The wireless network will give Purdue's highly mobile community access to numerous Purdue-developed mobile applications across the university's campus, including:
  
  • Hotseat, a social networking-powered application that creates a collaborative classroom, allowing students to establish communities of interest for aggregating and exchanging communications from social media sites. In addition, students can provide real-time feedback during courses, enabling professors to adjust the course content and improve the learning experience. HotSeat will be deployed in phases where the 802.11n Cisco Unified Wireless Network is available.
  • The Signals application provides students with real-time academic progress reports. From any location across campus, students can access the latest course information, grades and attendance for classes via their mobile device.
  • Purdue offers one of the largest installations of Echo360, a lecture-capture technology, enabling students to have anytime, anywhere access to video and audio of lectures on their mobile devices, for improved comprehension.
  • Students can also access Purdue's live video feeds on their mobile devices to view activities throughout the campus facility, as well as point their cell phone or mobile devices at landmarks and get additional information about the locations.
  • The wireless network will also support enhanced video replays of live athletic events on mobile devices. As part of the eStadium initiative, wireless access within the stadiums brings fans closer to the games. This direct link between stadium and fan creates a venue for additional services including concessions, merchandising and direct feedback. As a student-developed project, this Wi-Fi-based service improves the game-day experience while enhancing student life on campus.

Supporting Quotes:

• "With our all-mobile campus strategy, Purdue is redefining 'everywhere,' and allowing students, faculty and researchers to collaborate anywhere on campus. Purdue is already known for providing instructional resources for our students electronically and for providing cloud computing resources for the world's scientists. Now, mobile applications like Signals, HotSeat and eStadium are only the start of what Purdue will develop to help drive student success with timely graduations."
  -- Gerry McCartney, vice president and chief information officer for Purdue
  
  
• "Meeting the expectations of the mobile generation requires a wireless network capable of delivering uninterrupted, ubiquitous access to the breadth of applications used from the classroom to the residence halls and everywhere in between. Purdue is collaborating with Cisco to adopt the Cisco Unified Wireless Network -- the industry's highest-performing and most widely deployed 802.11n technology -- to transform the educational experience and improve student success."
  -- Ray Smets, vice president and general manager for the Cisco Wireless Networking Business Unit
  
  
• "Purdue is a great example of how wireless and mobility are helping educational institutions and companies excel. By working closely with Purdue and Cisco, we were able to collaborate on the best solution for the university, its faculty and students."
  -- Blair Crump, group president of worldwide sales for Verizon Business

Links/URLs:

• Read the Cisco Mobility blog
• Read the Verizon Think Forward blog on Mobility
• Follow "Cisco Mobility" on Twitter
• Cisco Connected Learning for Higher Education
• Mobility for Higher Education
• Video: Education in Motion with 802.11n Wireless

Tags / Keywords: Educause, Purdue University, Cisco, Verizon, Verizon Business, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi, WLAN, 802.11n, wireless, mobility, collaboration, student success, higher education, education in motion

RSS Feed for Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/rss.html

Embedded Video:

• Tour the Hotseat collaborative mobile Web application.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz6TUhcGf6s
  
  
• Hear from students who use Hotseat in the classroom.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8UR4xrjWME

About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://news.room.cicso.com.

About Verizon Business
Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), is a global leader in communications and IT solutions. We combine professional expertise with one of the world's most connected IP networks to deliver award-winning communications, IT, information security and network solutions. We securely connect today's extended enterprises of widespread and mobile customers, partners, suppliers and employees -- enabling them to increase productivity and efficiency and help preserve the environment. Many of the world's largest businesses and governments -- including 96 percent of the Fortune 1000 and thousands of government agencies and educational institutions -- rely on our professional and managed services and network technologies to accelerate their business. Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com.

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