Opinion

Tennessee “Almost” Technological University

Tennessee Tech prides itself on being one of the best and most affordable colleges in the state, yet we can’t keep a solid Wi-Fi signal. 

I’ve lived in New Hall North and Ellington and currently reside in Tech Village and can safely say that the Internet on campus is less than ideal. My freshman year it took Tech eight months to get the Wi-Fi accessible in the dorms.  Even then when the signal was working we got all of three bars. 

 For the two years I lived off campus and used Charter as my provider and did not have as many issues as I’ve had on campus. 

 The amount of times that I’ve experienced issues with Tech’s connection can’t even be counted on one hand, let alone two.  In my years off campus housing I had issues all of four times.  Even now, as I type these words, Tech’s Internet is having issues and it’s just another drop in the bucket. 

I understand every single Internet issue is not the universities fault.  I still have concerns with how long it takes the school to resolve these technical difficulties.  I don’t know much about Internet technology, but I don’t think it should take a university of this size and stature should take days to fix and Internet problem.

I know this campus has close to 11,000 students. With those students using their phones, laptops and tablets, it’s going to make the Internet run slowly.  However I still hold the opinion that a school that is known for computer science and Internet technology degrees should be able to keep a consistent connection without this many problems. 

I’m not saying we as students need to cut back on our usage of the signal.  My overarching point is that Internet connectivity is a real issue on this campus and until that issue becomes less of a problem we may want to start calling ourselves Tennessee “Almost” Technological University.