T-Mobile installs its service at Washington's American University: This unique relationship benefits T-Mobile enormously, but it's ambiguous what the university gets out of it. The release seemed to imply that T-Mobile wasn't overlaying a network on the existing wireless LAN at the university, but had installed its own network in 10 buildings. However, Tony Smith of The Register obtained more detail from the university, and confirmed that it is a virtual LAN overlay: access points are broadcasting public and private network names (SSIDs).
Students, faculty, and staff will receive discounted rates on T-Mobile's cell and Wi-Fi service off-campus, which is a more significant revenue opportunity for the No. 6 cell carrier than the potential revenue from an on-campus for-fee WLAN. Guests to the university will receive a special user name and password for free access, Smith reported.
The university's only benefit is that they don't have to bear the cost of installing and maintaining a guest-only WLAN and handling access to it. I've heard horror stories from various conferences, including one at Stanford of all places, where attendees had to send in their wireless adapter's MAC address ahead of time to gain free access during the event.
At other institutions, universities have built VLAN infrastructure and entirely or partially opened a partitioned guest-only Wi-Fi network everywhere. Case Western opened over 1,200 access points to the public as part of their OneCleveland project on a separate VLAN.