MWEB, one of South Africa’s largest Internet service providers (ISP), has selected Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi products and technology to support a new nationwide wireless broadband public access service, as well as managed enterprise wireless LAN (WLAN) services to businesses that exploit its vast fiber broadband service available throughout South Africa. MWEB has an installed base over 5,000 indoor and outdoor Ruckus ZoneFlex™ dual-band Smart Wi-Fi access points (APs), including ZoneFlex 7782 outdoor, and ZoneFlex 7982 and ZoneFlex 7055 indoor APs, throughout South Africa. MWEB has installed Ruckus access points within high-density indoor locations such as malls, hotels, restaurants, hospitals and other public venues, with plans to deploy more than 15,000 more over the next 12 to 18 months.
According to Ruckus, MWEB has selected its Smart Wi-Fi because it offers superior, high-performance Wi-Fi, especially in dense urban environments and public spaces, which is enabling MWEB to achieve its strategy.
“Today’s hotspot experience in South Africa is good enough for low-bit rate traffic such as tweets or accessing online applications like Facebook but they just can’t handle multimedia and video content,” said Nathier Kasu, General Manager of Wi-Fi at MWEB. “We are one of the first service providers to really deploy a real working, carrier-grade wireless infrastructure in South Africa. Our goal has always been to build a world-class Wi-Fi infrastructure on a scale that today remains unmatched, and we’ve found that we could only really do that with Ruckus products and technology, due to their reliability and robustness.”
“Africa remains one of the world’s biggest and best opportunities for delivering reliable, high-speed wireless broadband,” said Kasu. “Content-driven networks are a fundamental focus for us and we view building a world-class wireless infrastructure as strategic to the future and success of our fixed line operations in South Africa, allowing us to add good value to a new and existing subscriber base that is increasingly mobile.” Kasu continues, “The long tail for Wi-Fi is the ability deliver content and offer value-added services to venues and other big companies who are willing to pay for services that they can monetize, such as location services.”
“The traditional hotspot model is what we are NOT doing — we are building Wi-Fi Zones,” said Kasu. “Our strategy is to deploy Wi-Fi in strategic indoor and outdoor locations where people congregate in locations like shopping malls, hotels, hospitals, and theme parks and use Wi-Fi, but who want to use it for more sophisticated content such as streaming video and video on demand. Our coverage will be wider than traditional hotspot coverage, with a focus on providing almost blanket coverage in and around the venue, using a simple one-time registration and authentication process.”
Source - Sandvine
