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C utting cords is Penn's latest plan for its College Houses, and it will make plenty of students happy. When all of the University's dorm rooms come with wireless Internet access next fall, studying, collaborating or just playing games will be a lot easier.

Wireless may not be the most pressing issue facing student housing -- think pipes that do not leak or elevators that arrive in a reasonable amount of time.

But it is certainly something a good number of students care about, and for that reason Penn is justified in spending around $700,000 on the project. And anytime the University can be a leader in information technology it ought to jump at the chance.

Retrofitting decades-old buildings to accommodate wireless signals has been challenging so far, but Penn's IT department has been able to spread the technology to many corners of campus. The more the better.

So long as the system is designed with security and ease of use in mind, wireless networking will be a step toward better quality of life in Penn's dorms even if it is only minor.

Let us not stop there, though. Plenty of open spaces still exist where students congregate but cannot get network signals. Mayor Street has made a huge push in the past two years to make Philadelphia a completely wireless city. Penn might as well beat them to the punch on its own campus.

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