Ruckus Wireless said its Wi-Fi infrastructure underlies Global Reach Technology's River Thames Wi-Fi hotzone network, which provides wholesale and international roaming services in London and will be used for Global Reach's own planned retail public-access Wi-Fi service.
Global Reach deployed Ruckus' carrier-grade indoor and outdoor ZoneFlex Wi-Fi products along 27 miles of the River Thames and onboard Thames Clippers London River Ferries to support more than 30 million people accessing the river each year. The River Thames network is one of the world's largest outdoor mesh deployments, said Ruckus.
Global Reach is using Ruckus ZoneFlex 7782-N 2.4/5 GHz 802.11n outdoor access points at main piers crisscrossing the Thames River. Further, 24 Thames Clippers London river ferries are being equipped with ZoneFlex 7363 802.11n indoor dual-band Smart Wi-Fi access points, along with 3G backhaul and ZoneDirector controllers at the Global Reach network operation centers, to provide centralized administration and remote management.
Global Reach intends to launch its own retail Thames Wi-Fi hotzone branded service later this quarter using the river's hotzone infrastructure.
Its wholesale partner British Telecommunications is already providing public Wi-Fi access free of charge to all its BT Broadband subscribers via white-labeled service on the Thames River network. The Transport for London authority employs Global Reach's Wi-Fi infrastructure for private services such as real-time location-based information, tracking boats, network monitoring, timetables, CCTV surveillance and more.
Further, in UK cities Leeds and Bradford Global Reach is deploying Ruckus ZoneFlex 7762 outdoor dual-band 802.11n APs on street furniture for free City Wi-Fi services provides to the public by Virgin Media Business.
"Global Reach has developed a different model that not only delivers a carrier-grade Wi-Fi infrastructure at a much lower cost, we are also reducing the time to market for service providers and enterprise customers, allowing them to focus on monetization and bringing value to the subscriber experience," said Nigel Wesley, CEO of Global Reach Technology.
Along with Wi-Fi network deployments in the U.K., U.S., Scandinavia, Spain and Asia, Global Reach also provides a number of additional services including management of digital screens and IPCCTV.
Ruckus has been busy signing deals for its Wi-Fi gear with UK businesses and carriers. Earlier this month, it announced that its Smart Wi-Fi equipment would be deployed by Marston's, one of the UK's leading brewers and pub operators and the world's largest brewer of cask ale, for use within its nationwide chain of pubs and restaurants. In July 2012, Ruckus announced its outdoor Wi-Fi gear was being deployed by Telefonica UK's O2 business around London.
For more:
- see this Ruckus release and this release
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