Ruckus Wireless Deploys Municipal Wi-Fi Network in San Francisco:

Wi-Fi equipment vendor, Ruckus Wireless says that it had previously won a contract from the City and County of San Francisco, USA to provide a free-to-the-user municipal Wi-Fi service up and down the City's world-famous Market Street corridor.

Launched today, San Francisco's new free public Wi-Fi service is a key part of the City's multi-phase initiative to offer free public Wi-Fi in and around San Francisco.

This public-private partnership between San Francisco's Department of Technology (DT) and Ruckus teamed technical staff from the City and Ruckus to design, build and deploy the Wi-Fi network.

Mounted on traffic poles with gigabit fiber backbone connections, Ruckus ZoneFlex 7782-S outdoor access points (APs) are now providing dual-band (2.4 and 5 GHz) Wi-Fi service to users along Market Street. In locations where fiber backhaul to the Ruckus access points is prohibitive, Ruckus smart mesh networking technology is being used to provide wireless connections between access points. Redundant Ruckus SmartCell Gateway (SCG) 200 wireless LAN (WLAN) controllers are deployed within the City's data center to aggregate traffic and provide centralized management of the Wi-Fi infrastructure.

"Our goal was to identify and install some of the world's best Wi-Fi technology that could deliver an exceptional experience to some of the world's most discerning users," said Marc Touitou, Chief Information Officer and director of the Department of Technology for the City and County of San Francisco. "We've found that technology right in our own backyard, and have worked hard with Ruckus Wireless to build the foundation of what we believe is one of the country's premiere public Wi-Fi services."

Leveraging Wi-Fi to meet Africa’s broadband demands:

The prevalence of Wi-Fi in Africa and around the world is increasing, with more and more mobile operators looking to deploy it as part of their overall networks, according to Ruckus Wireless, Inc. , an exhibitor at this year’s AfricaCom, running from 12 - 14 November 2013 at the CTICC, in Cape Town, South Africa. As the role for Wi-Fi in mobile networks becomes clearer, and carrier-grade Wi-Fi solutions such as Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi become more readily available, the monetisation options are becoming clearer as well.

“The vast majority of the world is still waiting for broadband service. In the well-populated parts of developed countries, existing fixed phone and infrastructure has made broadband relatively easy to offer, and availability is now very high,” says Michael Fletcher, sales director for Ruckus Wireless sub-Saharan Africa. “Everywhere else, though, especially across regions in Africa, the high costs of current options, such as deploying new fixed infrastructure or large-scale macro-cellular wireless models like WiMAX, are big barriers to further broadband subscriber growth, yet the demand for Wi-Fi is there, and that’s where we come in.”

According to the Broadband Commission’s ‘State of Broadband 2013’ report, mobile broadband is the fastest growing technology in human history. Mobile broadband subscriptions, which allow users to access the web via smartphones, tablets and Wi-Fi-connected laptops, are growing at a rate of 30% per year. In fact, by the end of 2013 there will be more than three times as many mobile broadband connections as there are conventional fixed broadband subscriptions, with 2.1 billion mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide, which is equivalent to one third of the total global stock of mobile cellular subscriptions.