Wireless Access Solutions Go to School!
By Lester LaPierre, Marketing Manager

University officials nationwide are learning wireless access control is making the grade when it comes to securing the environments that their students use every day.  “I use Schlage wireless everywhere on campus,” says Richard Tollison, manager of telecom data services for Mississippi State University. “This is the only way I’ll install access control in the future!

Like most security and IT administrators, Mr. Tollison started off slow about four years ago installing Wireless Access locks on a dozen or so hard-to-wire doors. He also installed a handful of Wireless Portable Readers at their baseball stadium, allowing students to bypass the ticket box and go directly to the bleachers. Now he’s so confident in our Wireless Access technology and product line that he’s installing it on every door needing access control. He currently has 803 Wireless Access devices on campus and will have over 1,000 by the end of the year.  This includes brand new construction, not just retrofit and difficult-to-wire applications.

He’s not alone in this phenomenon. University of New Hampshire also went wireless for access control in Mills Hall, a new residence hall built about five years ago. For William Conk, housing manager for UNH, the decision to go wireless was quite simple. He looked at the economics. Mr. Conk figures he saved over $50,000 on a 40-door installation versus a wired alternative. Like MSU, the University of New Hampshire has continued to expand their wireless installations as well. This past summer, Schlage wireless access was installed on two more residence halls on campus.

Where are these two campuses finding these savings?  A traditional, wired access control point often takes eight to ten hours to install and often requires multiple trades—an electrician to install conduit and pull wire from the access control panel to the door, a locksmith to install a strike or a magnetic lock, and a technician to install the reader and sensors and connect it to the access control system. In comparison, a recent study found it takes about 45 minutes to install a Schlage wireless access lock. That’s over 90% faster than wired alternatives!

Already have an access control system installed with traditional, wired access points? No problem. Schlage wireless access solutions are based on an open architecture design to work seamlessly with virtually all access control systems. This provides the ability to mix and match wired and wireless solutions and manage them from a common access control software platform. In most cases, adding Wireless doors and monitoring their alarms and transactions is completely transparent to security administrators, meaning there isn’t a steep learning curve to enjoy the advantages of Wireless Access solutions. Conversely, competing wireless systems often require separate servers and access software resulting in redundant data entry and dedicated alarm monitoring screens.

Lastly, Schlage wireless access solutions are secure and scalable. All transmissions are encoded using multiple 128-bit keys and utilize spread spectrum RF technology, which was used extensively by the US military for secure communications. There are also 15 user selectable channels, and each with over 65,000 unique addresses. That’s nearly a million combinations! This is why the hundreds of Wireless devices installed at MSU and UNH don’t interfere with each other.

Today’s lesson? Faster installations mean lower costs and less disruption to your operation. Secure communications have been proven over the past five years with the installation of tens of thousands of doorways across the country. Open architecture designs mean our wireless solutions seamlessly integrate in your existing buildings as well as your new ones.  Look to wireless access from Schlage and get an A+ on your next security project.

To learn more about Schlage wireless access offerings, go to www.schlage.com or  join one of our free webinars scheduled for February 19, 2007.