Carrier Wi-Fi for the Mobile Industry: An Insider’s View

Written By Lisa Garza, Cisco Service Provider Marketing, Mobility Solutions

In his Wi-Fi Achieving New Heights blog after Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year, Doug Webster was excited to talk about the record-breaking carrier Wi-Fi network results we achieved with the Fira de Barcelona during the four-day conference.  It was one of the world’s largest single Wi-Fi deployments ever staged in a venue. Just to give you an idea, there were 80,880 Internet enabled devices connected during MWC, twice the amount from the year before. We summarized all the results visually in this Infographic.

Since MWC, we’ve received a lot of questions about the details behind the network deployment. We decided to go behind the scenes to give you an inside look with a couple of informative resources.

First is this video which shows how we partnered with the Fira de Barcelona, Unitronics and the GSMA to design and deploy the Wi-Fi network.  The video brings you into the Network Operations Center, the brains of the network, where all aspects of the network were monitored.  You’ll also see the tools we developed to monitor the health of the network and to analyze network results.  The Fira runs this network not just for MWC but for 2.5 million visitors to the 70 shows they host each year.  If you love Barcelona as much as I do, you’ll also enjoy seeing the sunny city once again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLUzBJlBZPk

The second piece is this detailed white paper that takes you through all the stages of deployment, from early planning and design through operation.  It covers the physical and RF design challenges we faced and how we used multiple features of the Cisco Wi-Fi solution to solve these challenges.  These include high density features we’ve developed for some of the toughest deployment scenarios in the world to our built-in beamforming and interference mitigation technology.  Our experienced team delivers a best-in-breed solution that is unmatched in the industry.

We’re looking forward to adding new services onto the Mobile World Congress Wi-Fi network next year, which will be here before you know it!

Have specific questions? Tweet us @CiscoSPMobility.

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Resources:

Cisco Aironet 3700

Cisco Aironet 3600

Mobility Services Engine

8500 Wireless LAN Controller

ASR 1000 Series Routers