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.
Grush: That's such an important part of moving forward in a higher education environment… alongside all the modernization, keeping the higher education experience front and center seems to be a very supportive and grounding thing a company like Cisco can do for its higher ed partners.
DePreta: One of the most encouraging findings in the report is that our higher education customers have recognized the importance of wireless infrastructure. They are seeing the need and rational for an investment in modernization of the wireless network infrastructure — with resulting gains in the user experience (again, we can see this play out in the user experience). So if you look at the data in our key findings for the higher education report, you see that nearly a third of U.S. schools anticipate their wireless budget growth exceeding 50 percent over the next five years. The wireless infrastructure becomes an investment and asset of paramount importance.
Grush: In higher education environments, it's almost always the case that you hear of schools operating under significant budget constraints. Gary, does the study address ways to face the barriers to ROI — and create strategies to deliver ROI within the context of an institution's new wireless modernization?
DePreta: I think that the report does a good job at framing the problem that you're describing. The study presents three barriers to ROI: operational complexity, security threats, and shortages in human capital. These problems are not unique to higher education. But when higher education institutions address all three areas, literally factoring all of these barriers into a holistic plan, we've found that ROI follows.
Grush: So the secret sauce is to address each of the three barriers in a holistic plan, opening up all the doors to ROI?
DePreta: That is what we're finding.
Grush: What is the wireless AI paradox?
DePreta: New AI applications, and the ROI of these AI applications, are advancing far faster than our enterprises can consume them. And so you have a massive ROI potential and yet, our ability to implement these AI applications in the existing infrastructure — to do it safely, to do it securely — is limited. The appropriate infrastructure is simply not there yet. So, you have to modernize the infrastructure before you can yield the AI benefits.
Grush: It sounds like the ROI everyone would like to see is out there, and surely, colleges and universities will move towards plans that help them reach for and ultimately demonstrate that ROI.
DePreta: Yes, it's an exciting time to be in higher education. We feel Cisco is uniquely positioned to help colleges and universities, and to embrace their commitment in a very safe, secure, and reliable way.
[Editor's note: Image by AI. Microsoft Image Creator by Designer.]