Image courtesy of Apogee website
Let’s face it: we’ve all had issues with the Skidmore Wi-Fi, which seems to be down every other week and only works well in certain buildings on campus. Consequently, there seems to be a constant uproar brewing amongst students regarding the issue of Wi-Fi in the dorms and other residence buildings.
The issue is said to lie with Apogee, Skidmore’s network provider of choice. Apogee is used at over 350 colleges and universities across the United States. With that in mind, you would think people would be pretty satisfied with their service. However, it seems as though many students are in agreement that Skidmore needs to perhaps look into getting a new provider or put more money towards improving the Wi-Fi, for many are fed up with their networks suddenly crashing or being extremely slow.
In my personal experience, I have had persistent issues with Apogee. Recently, I got a new computer and had to go through the process of setting up my Wi-Fi all over again. But when I went to set it up, the login page kept malfunctioning. Every time I would try to create an account, I would get a message saying I already had one. Then, when I would try and send myself a reset link I would get a message saying they could not find an email address associated with my name. I tried every email of mine and quickly came to the conclusion that, for once, this wasn’t a me thing. When I learned that this was something that has happened to other people as well, I started to think maybe there is a larger issue here.
On March 9, 2023, Skidmore finally addressed the ongoing issues with the Wi-Fi, claiming that Apogee’s hardware software had failed causing disruptions in Wi-Fi connectivity. In the email to students, Skidmore claims, “IT has requested an improvement plan from Apogee. Areas of focus in the plan include, non-exhaustively: a network audit to conduct a thorough review of all network components; deployment of additional field service support to assess peak usage experience; bandwidth review; and wireless speed increase.” Skidmore announced that Apogee Maintenance would begin ASAP, and since this announcement, it seems as though finally IT has been looking into improving the Wi-Fi at Skidmore.
In light of Skidmore addressing an improvement plan, I decided to conduct a brief survey about student’s satisfaction with the Skidmore Wi-Fi. I distributed this survey to a small sample size of twenty students and asked them the following questions: where on campus do you live; have you experienced Wi-Fi issues in the past month; on the scale from 1-5 how good is the Wi-Fi where you live; have you ever had to contact Apogee about Wi-Fi issues; how satisfied overall are you with the Wi-Fi.
100 percent of the survey respondents said that they had experienced Wi-Fi issues within the past month, with 55.6 percent of them saying they strongly agreed they had experienced Wi-Fi issues and 44.4 percent saying they agreed that they had experienced Wi-Fi issues. 44.4 percent of survey respondents rated their Wi-Fi in their particular residence area a three on a scale of one-to-five and 22 percent percent of survey respondents rated the Wi-Fi a two on a scale of one-to-five. Almost half of the survey respondents also noted that they had contacted Apogee in the past and that Apogee was not helpful. Finally, the majority of respondents disagreed with being satisfied with the overall quality of their Wi-Fi. Additionally, there were no discrepancies as to whether or not the Wi-Fi was better in the dorms versus the apartments; thus, it seems as though issues with Wi-Fi are universal across all residence areas for Skidmore students and only a small portion of students are satisfied with the Wi-Fi where they live.
All in all, many students agree that the issues with on-campus Wi-Fi have been a problem for far too long, and it seems that many are relieved that there appears to be some improvements being made.