Ruckus Wireless announced its deal with the City and County of San Francisco, CA to deliver free, outdoor public Wi-Fi service in Market Street corridor.
The Wi-Fi service will be available starting from the intersection of Market and Castro Streets down to the pedestrian corridor at the Embarcadero, said Ruckus Wireless in a statement.
The launch – in partnership between San Francisco’s Department of Technology (DT) and Ruckus Wireless — is a key part of the City’s multi-phase initiative to offer free public Wi-Fi in and around San Francisco.
Selina Lo, president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless, said: “With the growth of the mobile Internet and mobile Internet applications, high-speed Wi-Fi access is now viewed as a non-negotiable utility.”
Mounted on traffic poles with gigabit fiber backbone connections, Ruckus ZoneFlex 7782-S outdoor access points (APs) are powering San Francisco’s new Wi-Fi public access service, 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 highly resilient 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.
Marc Touitou, chief information officer and director of the Department of Technology for the City and County of San Francisco, said: “Given the growth and use of smart mobile devices, there are really no boundaries constraining the kind of applications that we can enable or the value that a reliable Wi-Fi infrastructure can bring to our City and its citizens.”
