Connectivity is the foundation of the modern campus
Cellular coverage for the modern campus
Universities operate like small cities — fast-moving, decentralized and built around digital expectations. Students need instant access to coursework and communication, faculty rely on mobile teaching tools, and campus operations depend on sensors, automation and safety systems that must work everywhere. Reliable, campus-wide 4G/5G coverage is now critical infrastructure — as essential as Wi-Fi, power and security. And the coverage that works across the quad fails in a lecture hall, a lab basement or a residence-hall corridor.
ANDREW® brings the mobile operators’ networks inside and distributes them across concrete-and-steel academic buildings, research labs and shielded environments, large lecture halls and auditoriums, stadiums, arenas and recreation centers, below-grade areas, tunnels and parking structures, dorm basements and historic or legacy buildings, and the quads, walkways and lots between them. Whether the answer is a building-wide distributed antenna system (DAS), targeted small cells or both, ANDREW designs it as a true neutral-host foundation — energy-efficient and ready to scale.
Challenges and opportunities
Reliable, campus-wide cellular coverage now underpins learning, safety and campus life. This is where in-building and across campus cellular coverage matters most.
Learning & research
Modern academic environments depend on high bandwidth, low latency and reliable handoffs — delivered with consistent mobility and real-time performance across the entire campus:
Student life
Universities rely on mobility and digital tools to support engagement, flow and communication:
Safety & security
A growing ecosystem of mobile and connected systems depends on end-to-end coverage, and these systems must function everywhere — research labs, below-grade areas, back-of-house spaces and the open ground between buildings:
Deployments
Large public universities
Private universities and liberal arts colleges
Community colleges and technical institutes
Tier 1 and R1 research universities
Academic medical and health-science campuses
Multi-campus university systems
The ANDREW advantage
ANDREW all-digital solutions enable 4G/5G connectivity across colleges and universities worldwide — from a single building to a multi-campus university system.
Our comprehensive offering for higher education spans the ERA® DAS platform, ONECELL® in-building small cells and expert design and support.
Partnering with ANDREW means wireless technology built for long-term simplicity, efficiency and sustainability — through 5G and beyond.
Featured solutions
ANDREW brings reliable 4G/5G inside with DAS and small cells, adding facility-wide coverage and capacity across academic buildings, residence halls and athletic facilities.
ANDREW indoor solutions deliver the reliability and redundancy security teams and first responders need in an emergency.
Featured resources
See how ANDREW delivers reliable 4G/5G coverage across colleges and universities.
Frequently asked questions
Answers about indoor signal, DAS, small cells, carriers, Wi-Fi and campus-wide coverage.
The macro network was built to cover ground, not to get through it. Concrete, steel, low-emissivity glass and below-grade construction absorb cellular signal — often enough to take a strong outdoor signal down to nothing a few rooms in. In-building wireless brings the operators’ networks inside and distributes them where people actually are.
A DAS distributes every operator’s network across a large or complex building on one shared system; a small cell adds focused cellular capacity in a specific area. ANDREW offers both — the ERA® DAS platform and ONECELL® in-building small cells — and helps match the right approach, or a combination, to your campus.
Yes. ANDREW’s platform is one infrastructure, approved by global operators, carrying public cellular, private networks and public safety from pre-4G through 5G.
Yes — they do different jobs. Wi-Fi carries the devices the university owns and runs — laptops, lab instruments, building systems. A DAS or small cell brings the operators’ cellular networks to everyone else — students, visitors and prospective families on any carrier — and only cellular carries E911 that knows where the caller actually is rather than where the account is registered, Wireless Emergency Alerts to every device in the building and public-safety communications.
Yes. ANDREW deploys in one building, across the campus or centralized remotely, with radios matched to lecture halls, labs, residence halls and arenas — one platform for a multi-building campus, indoors and out.
Proven. ANDREW’s all-digital DAS is operating at scale today on more than a decade of digital deployments, and is first to connect all three major U.S. operators, across every major RAN vendor, digitally on one DAS — deployed at scale, not promised on a roadmap.
Let’s discuss how ANDREW can help get you there.