Sprint joins University of Notre Dame for groundbreaking, three-year study on students’ wireless and social networking habits

The comments and questions have been floating about for years:

"Kids these days don’t talk anymore. They only text.”

"Don’t college kids have any shame? They’ll spill their guts on Facebook before talking to a real-live person.”

Are these claims true? Or does mobile technology actually help students learn to better express themselves and ultimately enhance their face-to-face interactions?

Such questions will be studied and answered during a pioneering, three-year study by The Wireless Institute, the University of Notre Dame’s preeminent research center aimed at developing innovations and educating students in wireless technology, economics and regulatory policy. Sprint (NYSE: S) will help The Wireless Institute by offering 200 devices and two years of service for the students who volunteer for the study, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

"Mobile technology is central to the lives of American youth,” said Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. "They’re masters at social networking, gaming and multi-tasking. There’s an interest in learning if this technology has changed their face-to-face behavior. We are honored to partner with such a highly respected university on this landmark study.” Hesse is a graduate of Notre Dame.

More than 98.8 percent of college students own a cell phone, according to a 2010 study from Ball State University. The study also found that 97 percent of students use text messaging as their main form of communication. The Wireless Institute study will delve deeper into students’ usage habits and also track how that usage affects their face-to-face communications. The study’s findings will provide a broader understanding of how technology is embedded in students’ lives as they transition from teenagers to young adults.

Four Notre Dame professors – Aaron Striegel, Christian Poellabauer, David Hachen and Omar Lizardo – will lead the study, which will monitor 200 students with specially outfitted smartphones from Sprint. The devices will have a lightweight agent that tracks how students use the phones and how they interact digitally with fellow students. The monitoring will include:

• Location data, such as proximity to other participants
• Digital communications, such as social networking, email or texting
• Digital marketplace, such as app purchases, usage and music

Starting this fall, 200 incoming Notre Dame freshmen will volunteer for the study, review and sign consent and waiver forms and be tracked for two years. The third and final year of the study will be spent analyzing and releasing the comprehensive data on students’ usage and behavior patterns.

"The study will offer an unprecedented look into how students use mobile devices,” said Dr. Aaron Striegel, associate professor in Notre Dame’s College of Computer Science and Engineering. "The data gathered from the study will offer profound insights about the social impact of always-on network access as well as improve how we design and manage future wireless networks. The relationship with Sprint allows us to offer a cutting-edge smartphone with unlimited text and data services to a sizeable portion of the incoming freshmen class.”

Adds J. Nicholas Laneman, director of The Wireless Institute: "Our relationship with Sprint takes an ambitious research project to the next level and will significantly amplify its impact.”

In addition to the NSF study, Sprint and The Wireless Institute begin a six-month joint research project this month to study consumer behavior on the Sprint 3G network. During this study, researchers will visualize traffic patterns on the network to study customer segmentation and busy hours at a cell site level. Among other things, they will also explore which handsets dominate the traffic at particular towers. The data from this large-scale visualization will then be analyzed for meaningful trends that can in turn be used to support the customers on Sprint’s network.

"Delving deep into the inner workings of network behavior will enable us to further predict usage trends,” said Bob Azzi, Sprint senior vice president, network. "With increased data demands driven by advanced devices and applications, it’s vital for us to stay on top of these trends as part of our continual efforts to improve our customer experience.”

The Wireless Institute relationship is the latest in several initiatives between Sprint and Notre Dame:

• Notre Dame became the first university to officially endorse Sprint ID, a revolutionary way to customize select smartphones with specific content such as apps, ringtones, widgets and wallpapers. Notre Dame students, fans, alumni and the athletic department will soon have their own customizable Sprint ID packs for free download.¹
• In the fall of 2010, Sprint became the official wireless sponsor of Notre Dame athletics, including this year’s 27-7 men’s basketball team, which finished second in the Big East and captured a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament.

ABOUT THE WIRELESS INSTITUTE

The Wireless Institute (WI) at the University of Notre Dame is a center of scholarship and partnerships that addresses challenges of great value to society in wireless technology, economics and regulatory policy. WI builds upon longstanding strengths in basic research in communication technologies which began on the Notre Dame campus in 1899 with one of the first long distance-wireless transmissions in North America. WI consists of an interdisciplinary team faculty, students and staff from the Colleges of Engineering, Business and Arts and Letters that is actively developing strategic partnerships within key segments of the wireless industry and with relevant government agencies.

ABOUT SPRINT NEXTEL

Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel served more than 51 million customers at the end of 1Q 2011 and is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the United States; offering industry-leading mobile data services, leading prepaid brands including Virgin Mobile USA, Boost Mobile, and Assurance Wireless; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. Newsweek ranked Sprint No. 6 in its 2010 Green Rankings, listing it as one of the nation’s greenest companies, the highest of any telecommunications company. You can learn more and visit Sprint at www.sprint.com or www.facebook.com/sprint and www.twitter.com/sprint.

¹ Sprint ID: Up to 5 packs available at once on select devices. Packs may vary by device. Pack selection may change without notice.