City-wide Wi-Fi hotspot network goes live in Chongqing

Details: James Barton; Category: Wireless Networks; 03 February 2011; 10410 views

A large-scale, citywide network of Wi-Fi hotspots is being deployed by Chongqing Telecom, a unit of China Telecom, in the southwestern Chinese city...

A large-scale, citywide network of Wi-Fi hotspots is being deployed by Chongqing Telecom, a unit of China Telecom, in the southwestern Chinese city. The operator has now deployed over 4,000 indoor and outdoor Smart Wi-Fi access points (APs) along with WLAN controllers across the city.

With a population of 31 million people and covering 31,800 square miles, Chongqing is one of the People’s Republic of China’s four direct-controlled municipalities. The deployment, which is being facilitated with equipment provided by Ruckus Wireless, supports an innovative new service called Tianyi Broadband.
The Wi-Fi APs now cover hundreds of hot zones within five districts and have been installed in a wide range of locations spanning from universities to restaurants, office buildings to shopping centres and public venues.
“It’s very clear that smarter Wi-Fi has now become a strategic imperative by Tier 1 carriers around the world to deal with the Mobile Internet,” said Selina Lo, president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless. “Operators like Chongqing Telecom are quickly recognising the need for carrier-class Wi-Fi solutions designed to deal with the explosion of dual-band devices that are consuming and generating huge amounts of data traffic.”
According to Chongqing, with the proliferation of mobile devices, subscribers are now accessing the internet from every conceivable location.
Tianyi Broadband – a user-centric solution that bundles wired broadband, Wi-Fi and CDMA 3G in the same package – allows users to connect to China Telecom’s services through a single account. Services include email, SMS, Tianyi-live (a chat service), love music (streaming music) and Tianyi video (video streaming).
Chongqing’s stated aim was to give subscribers the same internet experience wherever they are: at home or outside, with the same user account for them to use in any location. Therefore, it was critical to have a high performance and very reliable mobile network to deliver that experience. By offloading data traffic from the current CDMA 1X and EVDO to Wi-Fi, Chongqing is delivering a superior user experience without dramatically investing, while adding new capacity to the 3G infrastructure, operation and maintenance.
Wi-Fi complements Chongqing’s existing wireline network – providing broader and reliable wireless coverage to mobile internet subscribers. By linking with CHINANET, the backbone of Chinese public internet operated and managed by China Telecom, Chongqing Telecom can more easily and flexibly provide users with high-speed internet access nearly everywhere they roam.
According to Chongqing Telecom, a key challenge has been to achieve good stable network coverage across schools, hospitals, shopping malls, commercial streets, hotels, office buildings and other environments where unlicensed spectrum is inherently unpredictable.
In public and private venues alike, there are now many other Wi-Fi networks that cause considerable interference. Ruckus’ technology was able to mitigate interference for Chongqing through the use of dynamic beamforming technology. The firm’s BeamFlex smart antenna array technology constantly focuses and directs RF signals over the best path for each client. This reduces co-channel interference between access points (APs) and minimises packet loss while extending signal coverage. With the technology, Chongqing was able to significantly reduce the number of APs to cover a given area and lower operational and capital expense compared with alternative solutions.
For management, the operator has deployed new, high-capacity ZoneDirector controllers with WAPI and IPv6 support. The Ruckus ZoneDirector supports a variety of applications needed to plan, deploy and operate the wireless network, including Wi-Fi planning, user authentication/billing and integrating with operators’ management systems.
With the ZoneDirectors, Chongqing makes use of multiple service set identifiers (SSIDs) to allow for a range of differentiated services at each hotspot. For example, wireless services on a university campus can be divided into two different types – the campus network access for students and faculty, and the service used for high speed internet access to meet different demands of students, teachers and visitors.
Today, subscribers can enjoy quality wireless broadband services in any Chongqing hotspot. Looking forward, Chongqing said it plans to extend the Wi-Fi network to suburbs and rural areas to achieve complete coverage across the entire city.
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