Satellite broadband provider Hughes Network Systems LLC is partnering with Aruba Networks on a new managed Wi-Fi service for retailers which optimizes network traffic from the in-store wireless local area network (LAN) to the corporate wide-area network (WAN). The two companies said that the new solution can “dramatically improve both the customer and employee experience” across retailers’ stores.
HughesON In-Store Mobility will debut at the NRF Annual Conference and Expo in New York this week and be available this quarter. Designed for companies with many branch locations, the solution combines Aruba’s Instant access points (APs) with Hughes’ end-to-end, enterprise-class quality-of-service and ActiveCompression.
“Shoppers often experience poor Wi-Fi performance due to traffic congestion during peak shopping periods,” said Ricardo Belmar, director of product marketing at Hughes. “Our new HughesON solution is delivering two to three times improvement in bandwidth and performance in actual retail stores. Now retailers can enjoy better guest Wi-Fi and business networking in a single solution, at a better price point, all installed, protected, and managed by Hughes.”
–In other Aruba news, the company said that current customer Ryerson University in Toronto is upgrading to its 220 series 802.11ac APs at its new Ted Rogers School of Management and other locations across campus. Because of the university’s downtown location, interference has been an ongoing network issue.
“Our campus is surrounded by high-rise buildings. As a result, we’re frequently plagued by signals and rogues from all over campus and the surrounding area,” said Mourad Michael, assistant director of communications infrastructure for Ryerson. “Secure and reliable coverage is critical in this kind of environment.”
BYOD capability for its more than 30,000 students and 2,700 faculty and staff was also a priority, with concurrent connections sometimes reaching 15,000. Ryerson has already deployed more than 250 of the 1,000 802.11ac APs that it plans to install, as well as replacing older model Aruba APs across campus with the goal of eventually moving to a complete 802.11ac infrastructure.
–Ireland-based hospitality Wi-Fi provider Bitbuzz has made inroads in serving Holiday Inn Express hotels around the United Kingdom. Locations using Bitbuzz to provide complimentary Wi-Fi service include Croydon, Walsall, Leicester, Harlow, Folkstone, Tamworth, Doncaster, Strathclyde and London Park Royal.
Bitbuzz says it now has more than 469 Wi-Fi hotspots in its network and serves more than 11,500 hotel bedrooms in Ireland and the U.K., with more than 1.5 million registered users.
–Distributed antenna system provider TE Connectivity will showcase its new FlexWave Active Integration Panel at Mobile World Congress next month. The new panel enables multi-carrier, multi-protocol connectivity between base stations and DAS, and TE says that it cuts deployment time and costs, makes system configuration more flexible, and enables remote monitoring and control of base station power coming into a DAS.
