<<<... College staff will either use Nokia E-series phones, such as the E65, or else the touch-screen HTC Touch Cruise, a phone he is particularly pleased with: "I've shown it to twenty senior managers - they all preferred it to the E65." He's also planning to offer a Blackberry-type phone - and to use the phones to extend IT services to users who would otherwise not be using them.
“Many people on our staff don’t have a PC, but they have a phone. Yet they have the same requirements as any other office worker, such as email access, calendaring access and lowest-cost calling method,” says Race. “Turning to mobile phones as an alternative to purchasing a computer for every employee is not only more economical, it has the added value of making them more reachable, which leads to improved productivity. Best of all, we can do all of this without skyrocketing mobile bills thanks to Wi-Fi.”
Race has already got ideas for the future. An upcoming feature will allow him to track phones, so staff can be found easily. The same feature would allow the college to give more support to "at risk" students - providing disabled people with as normal a college experience as possible.
It may be possible to give all students access to the college phone system if they have dual-mode phones. They already have free access to the Wi-Fi and will probably be experimenting with mobile VoIP software such as Skype or Truphone in any case.
Further down the line he expects other benefits as new features get added to the system. A push-to-talk feature will shortly be available, that would allow him to replace an expensive set of walkie-talkies that some staff use. "If we get the right form of smartphone, we can give them one phone instead of three," says Race.
