The university began the transition to eduroam as its main wireless network Jan. 3, according to a Dec. 9 email from The Office of Information Technology (OIT).

Eduroam is an international roaming Wi-Fi service with over 10,000 hotspots at universities and academic institutions globally. St. Joe’s students, faculty and staff can access these hotspots using their St. Joe’s credentials, wrote Philip Ichinaga, chief information security officer and senior director of network and telecommunication services for OIT, in an email to The Hawk. 

“Not only does Eduroam allow seamless connectivity between locations, but it also offers the added benefit of enabling members of our community to connect effortlessly to wireless networks at thousands of participating universities globally, an important advantage in today’s interconnected academic and professional environment,” Ichinaga wrote.

Eduroam has been available for the Hawk Hill campus since 2022, for the University City campus since approximately 2016 and was implemented on the Lancaster campus in August 2024, Ichinaga wrote.

The sjuwireless, SJU and SJU-Students networks remain functional at this time, although they are hidden from the list of available networks to encourage the transition to eduroam, Ichinaga wrote. 

All three of those networks will be fully retired by early summer 2025, according to the Dec. 9 email from OIT.

Amidst the transition, some St. Joe’s students have experienced issues with their Wi-Fi connection. 

Jhanille Hancel ’27, who has been using eduroam since spring of 2024, said she switched after having connectivity problems with sjuwireless. While the new network was initially faster, it has not been without its own problems, especially now that it is the main network, Hancel said. 

“Now that they’ve made the switch for the entire campus to use it, I recognize how it has slowed down a bit. Oftentimes, there is no network,” Hancel said. “Sometimes it kicks me off and connects by itself, which can be an inconvenience at times, especially when you’re trying to make a deadline.” 

Unreliable network connection has also been frustrating for Anneliese Ashley ’25, who began using eduroam Jan. 13. Ashley said it took her three hours to connect her devices to eduroam due to the connection dropping. 

“It wasn’t great because I was trying to organize myself for the first day of classes and get textbooks and everything, but there’s only so much you can do when it’s not working,” Ashley said. 

According to Ichinaga, connectivity issues such as these can be attributed to numerous factors, including “device compatibility, network availability or saturation during peak usage times,” particularly with MacBook devices. 

Ichinaga added that the Technology Service Center has received a “natural increase in support requests” that is typical following the introduction of any new technology.