Ruckus Wireless to provide equipment, Alepo to provide software for Wi-Fi to support 20 million Sri Lankans
Service provider Sri Lanka Telecom today announced a plan to deploy an islandwide Wi-Fi network to serve some 20 million people with the help of Ruckus Wireless and Alepo.
Sri Lanka Telecom will use the Ruckus ZoneFlex indoor/outdoor access point managed by the company’s SmartCell Gateway. Alepo will provide the business support system and operations support system software.
SLT plans to offer Wi-Fi access with single-use prepaid plans, as well as bundled subscriptions for existing broadband customers, automated mobile offload and through wholesale and roaming agreements with third-party providers. The broad Wi-Fi deployment follows interoperability tests involving all three players.
“Our joint solution with Alepo provides Sri Lanka Telecom with a comprehensive and seamlessly integrated platform to help enable them to maximize revenue in the growing wireless market,” said Sudarshan Boosupalli, managing director of the India and SAARC region for Ruckus Wireless.
Derrick Gross, director of business development for Austin, Texas-based Alepo, recently stopped by the RCR Wireless News studio to discuss the Wi-Fi project and ways for operators to monetize Wi-Fi services.
“In Sri Lanka, they’re looking at a couple different options,” Gross said. “There are ways to monetize your network. We have hot spot portals where you actually land on a page and you can pay with vouchers. Our solution enables them to generate the vouchers, they go and print them then distribute them to partner shops. Users will buy the voucher, they put it in the portal page then they get access to the Wi-Fi network.”
Other Wi-Fi monetization schemes could include mobile offload, which saves fixed network costs, or even data passes sold to tourists.
Dileepa Wijesundera, group CEO at SLT, said the new offering “provides a host of direct, targeting marketing opportunities for shop owners, companies and big brands within these environments. With our extensive countrywide fiber-optic network, we’re able to provide the end-to-end infrastructure required, delivering carrier-grade Wi-Fi to business locations as well as crowd-sourcing public places. We are aiming to adopt an aggressive expansion strategy for this solution, and already have a pipeline of additional retail sites that we will be launching very soon.”
