Pictures of little gray boxes with bunny ear attennaes protruding have tantalized residents of Adams House for five months now, their promise of untethered instant messaging unfulfilled.

The signs—marking locations of planned transmitters—represent progress on a much-awaited project to provide wireless ethernet access in all of the Houses’ common areas.

On the one hand, this progress has been substantial.

Three years ago, plans for wireless were only a glimmer in the techies’ eyes. Now two Houses, the Science Center, the Maxwell-Dworkin building, Loker Commons and Cabot, Hilles, Lamont and Widener Libraries all have wireless Internet access.

With paperwork and planning for Adams, Dunster, Eliot, Mather and Quincy Houses complete, those Houses await only the physical installation and wiring for access points.

And Cabot was wired in a “spurt” of progress that began this week.

On the other hand, in the five Houses, the signs are still the full extent of that progress.

Last spring, Director of Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS) Frank M. Steen hopefully predicted that installations in the all of the Houses would be completed by the end of the calendar year, but that date passed with the full installation of only Kirkland and Leverett.

Engineers have mapped out optimal locations for the wireless hubs—hence the signs. Equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars has been purchased. Yet until this week the process had been stalled—by as much as five months in Adams and Eliot—as the Houses awaited final installation.

Nuts, Bolts and Wireless Hubs

Davis and Steen say that forward momentum has been regained and that teams will wire Adams, Eliot and Dunster next week.

But a number of unforseen difficulties—including staffing issues, competing HASCS projects and construction problems—have delayed the process by several months.

“It has taken much longer to do dorms then ever expected,” Steen says.

The installation in the Houses is every bit a priority as it ever was and HASCS’ tight budget is not a factor, Steen says.

Library reading rooms remain the top priority for wireless installation, but the Houses are a close second, he says.