MWEB Selects Ruckus Wireless for National Smart Wi-Fi Service Across South Africa

Details: James Barton; Category: Wireless Networks; 19 March 2014; 11415 views

South African Internet service provider MWEB has selected Ruckus Wireless to supply 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 fibre broadband service available throughout South Africa.

MWEB has installed over 5,000 indoor and outdoor Ruckus ZoneFlex dual-band Smart Wi-Fi access points (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. The company will operate 150 Wi-Fi Zones by the end of March 2014 using Ruckus products, offering dual-band Wi-Fi access, with plans to increase to over 500 sites by the end of 2016.

“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 deploy a working, carrier-grade wireless infrastructure in South Africa.”

According to industry reports, mobile traffic will account for 26% of all South African data traffic by 2016. Mobile phone use in South Africa has increased from 17% of adults in 2000 to 76% in 2010, according to research firm Nielsen South Africa. Today, more than 29 million South Africans use mobile phones over radio (28 million), TV (27 million) or personal computers (6 million). IDC forecasts that the wireless LAN market in South Africa will grow over 120% from 2012 to 2017 (relative to end user revenue).

“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.”

“The traditional hotspot model is what we are NOT doing—we are building Wi-Fi Zones,” continues 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.”

The Ruckus ZoneFlex access points are centrally managed through full-redundant clusters of Ruckus SmartCell Gateways (SCGs) installed in MWEB data centres in Cape Town and Johannesburg. To deliver graphic-rich media content reliably, MWEB’s Wi-Fi network has been architected to support real-time video streaming and rich multimedia content within high-density locations.

From a single Ruckus SCG 200, MWEB is able to support hundreds of venues, with the ability to give venue owners a view into their specific infrastructure, and deliver customer client analytics on the use of MWEB’s installed Wi-Fi infrastructure at each location.