Ruckus Wireless, a provider of advanced wireless systems for the mobile Internet market, announced that the public Wi-Fi network deployed at Sundance Film Festival offloaded terabytes of data from local cellular networks, delivering high capacity broadband access to Sundance moviegoers.
“Having some 50,000 people converge on this little mountain town over a week and a half creates huge problems for anyone trying to get reliable broadband access,” said Justin Simmons, associate director of IT at Sundance, in a statement. “Last year it was nearly impossible to even make a cell phone call. This year, we took matters into our own hands using the best Wi-Fi we could find.”
The Sundance Film Festival deployed a public Wi-Fi network, based on smart Wi-Fi technology from Ruckus Wireless (News - Alert) to provide broadband access to the thousands of festival-goers equipped with smartphones and mobile devices.
The Ruckus ZoneFlex dual-band 802.11n network provided indoor/outdoor coverage to nearly 15,000 mobile device users in over a dozen remote venues over the 10-day event.
“Offloading mobile data traffic from cellular networks isn't just of interest to operators,” said Selina Lo (News - Alert), president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless. “To deliver predictable performance and high capacity connectivity to essential applications, many enterprises and organizations, such as Sundance, will take control when predictable application connectivity and performance is essential.”
In previous years, the absence of a Wi-Fi network posed major challenges for local 3G networks. The network became overburdened with the volume of mobile data traffic, resulting in a poor experience for festival patrons, film industry representatives and members of the press.
To ensure this wouldn't happen again, Sundance installed its own Wi-Fi network across nearly all of its sites servicing the festival.
With Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi systems and technology in place, the wireless network eased congestion on cellular networks and delivering always-on access to thousands of visitors equipped with iPads, iPhones, laptops and other mobile devices.
Last year, Ruckus Wireless announced that it expanded its Asia Pacific operations. As part of the expansion, it appointed five industry executives to its Southeast Asian teams.
Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Janice McDuffee