'Once students had moved in it would have been difficult to get access [in places where] technicians may have needed to go,' said Heather Mazzotta, local university account manager for Bell Canada. If a problem had occurred with an access point located within the residences, a 24-hour notice would have been required in order to enter a student dorm in order to fix things, she said.

The second phase involved mounting approximately 1,000 access points in 40 buildings around the campus and wiring the cabling to all of them.

Lauzon admitted he underestimated the amount of testing required. 'We had to make sure we were getting 100 per cent access everywhere,' he said.

During testing, Lauzon discovered certain locations had 'blank spots' or areas where wireless access was not available. To correct the problem, he shifted some of the access points and installed additional devices.

Lauzon also replaced older equipment that the university was using for its previous wireless network.