case study

Hotspot: SkyFii Queen Victoria BuildingFREE WI-FI HOTSPOTS DELIVER SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL AT QUEEN VICTORIA BUILDING AND ADJACENT RETAIL OUTLETS IN SYDNEY CBDSkyFii is an Australian hotspot provider with a vision of bringing free, high-quality Wi-Fi access to the country, using an advertiser-supported model that has proved successful in the US, the UK and parts of Asia, according to SkyFii director Wayne Arthur.

“There currently isn’t a ubiquitous free Wi-Fi network, of a consistent quality to serve mobile device users across Australia,” he observed, but said SkyFii has the opportunity to fill that role.

The SkyFii service is funded through the delivery of rich content on behalf of advertisers. Traditionally users must watch around 15 seconds of advertising before their devices are registered on the network. This is a great proposition for advertisers, as it delivers the full attention of a mobile audience. “There’s proven benefit in this marketing approach for the advertiser,” said Arthur.

Among the first locations to offer SkyFii’s Wi-Fi service are four Sydney CBD shopping centres operated by Ipoh Pty Limited, including, QVB (the Queen Victoria Building), The Galeries, The Strand Arcade and Chifley Plaza.

“As Queen Victoria said, we are not interested in the possibilities of defeat” Arthur smiled. After seek-ing proposals from multiple service providers, SkyFii selected to work with BigAir who put forward Ruckus Wireless Smart Wi-Fi to complement its network services and Internet connectivity, in order to achieve the required quality of service.

OVERVIEW

SkyFii, an Australian provider of hotspot access, working with service provider and Ruckus partner BigAir, deploys free, pervasive, carrier class Wi-Fi access to heritage listed and one of Australia’s most iconic retail outlets at Queen Victoria Building (QVB) and adjacent IPOH retail outlets.

REQUIREMENTS

• Reliable and pervasive signal cover-age throughout the four levels of the heritage site

• Detail access and usage statistics for advertiser reporting

• All APs to be painted to exactly match one of 7 QVB heritage col-ours dependent on position

• Advanced Wi-Fi APs for thousands of remote hotspot locations

• Simple and robust remote manage-ment of Wi-Fi devices and services

• Automatic redirection of client ses-sions for authentication

SOLUTION

• 16 Ruckus ZoneFlex 7363 Smart Wi-Fi APs

• ZoneDirector 3000 Smart Wi-Fi Controller

• Ruckus FlexMaster Network Man-agement System

BENEFITS

• Delivering consistent and reliable performance even during peak times

• Elimination of manual management of Wi-Fi devices

• Reliable signal and ubiquitous cover-age

• Adaptable Wi-Fi signals allow reli-able coverage within hostile RF environment Iconic heritage building QVB and adjacent retail outlets offer

Australia’s first ad sponsored free Wi-Fi hotspot, attracting over 2,200 users to stay online with fast and reliable Smart Wi-Fi.

Hotspot SkyFii: Queen Victoria Building

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content for specific retailers and service providers based on the access point that a device is con-nected to.

“The system allows push marketing and on-site marketing,” said Jean Morel, General Manager at BigAir, “such as special offers from retailers.”

In time, SkyFii will be able to present advertise-ments that are relevant to individual users, based on the MAC address of their devices and their pre-vious patterns of use. “Such a tailored delivery is where the industry is heading,” said Arthur.

The Ruckus equipment allows SkyFii to impose usage limits on individual devices in terms of time or data volume, but that is not currently necessary, said Arthur. As is the practice for most ISPs, cer-tain sites are blacklisted.

The engine room

Morel said BigAir tracks the types of devices being connected, the frequency of use and session dura-tion, and provides daily, weekly or monthly reports to SkyFii so sponsors can see the exposure they are receiving.

The SkyFii Wi-Fi service is monitored, maintained and managed from BigAir’s network operations centre (NOC), and the company also provides round-the-clock customer support. Morel said this covers everything from an individual user being able to connect a device through to reaching a remote site. He explained that BigAir’s systems perform deep packet inspection and prioritise web and VoIP traffic, while file downloads are handled on a ‘best effort’ basis. “The network delivers a consistent and reliable performance even during peak times,” Morel said.

“We are delighted with the performance of the Ruckus equipment,” said Arthur, “its quality exceeds anything else in the market.” Particularly important to SkyFii is the ability of Ruckus prod-ucts to handle a large number of simultaneous ses-sions, along with the BeamFlex™ technologies that deliver the strongest possible signal to each device.

Installation of the Ruckus equipment was “a straightforward process,” said Arthur. “Working with BigAir was both easy and a pleasure.” The fact that QVB is a heritage-listed building did add some complexity to the rollout. Sixteen Ruckus access points (APs) were installed along with one Ruckus ZoneDirector 3000 Smart Wi-Fi Controller, and each AP had to be painted to exactly match one of seven heritage colours depending on the wall on which they were mounted.

Cabling and wiring was performed by an in-house electrician, with the work being done out of hours to avoid inconveniencing shoppers. The installation was completed with no visible ducts, conduits or cables in order to fit in with the upmarket and herit-age character of the centre.

Although Arthur expected the entire installation to take up to 12 weeks, the job was done in four weeks, plus another few days for setup and testing.

“We were very happy with that,” he said.

The first phase of the project — at QVB and The Galeries — went live at the end of July 2012, and within eight weeks was serving around 1,000 users per day. Chifley Plaza and The Strand Arcade were added in late September. Arthur expects to reach more than 1,000 users per day even before the service is promoted at the centres. Current network statistics show that there are in excess of 2,200 users per day through this network.

In addition to a ‘walled garden’ providing content relating to the centre and advertisers, the SkyFii platform also provides for the delivery of localised

Hotspot SkyFii: Queen Victoria Building

Ruckus Wireless, Inc. 350 West Java Drive Sunnyvale, CA 94089 USA (650) 265-4200 Ph \ (408) 738-2065 Fx

www.ruckuswireless.comCopyright © 2013 Ruckus Wireless, Inc. All rights reserved. Ruckus Wireless and Ruckus Wireless design are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Ruckus Wireless, the Ruckus Wireless logo, BeamFlex, ZoneFlex, MediaFlex, FlexMaster, ZoneDirector, SpeedFlex, SmartCast, and Dynamic PSK are trademarks of Ruckus Wireless, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document or Website are the property of their respective owners. Revised July 2013.

“ We are delighted with the performance of the Ruckus equipment.”

Wayne ArthurDirector, SkyFii

“The Ruckus equipment is ‘rock solid’,” said Morel. “It never requires resetting or tinkering with configurations.” Ruckus’s ChannelFly tech-nology automatically changes channels in order to maximise through-put, which is particularly important in dense metropolitan locations.

The ZoneDirector was placed in the data centre to manage all the shopping centres from a single location. “This simplifies configurations and to add new APs to expand the Wi-Fi coverage,” Yamamoto said. “Additionally, the Ruckus Zone Director controllers are smart enough to identify the types of devices that are currently connected, and take into consideration whether those devices support ChannelFly. The Ruckus Speedflex wireless perfor-mance testing tool is used to check the speed especially on multiple hop AP speeds.”

Arthur said SkyFii has gained a lot from its relationship with Ruckus in terms of the enthusiasm and expertise of its people, and its experience of delivering high-quality Wi-Fi service in congested areas: “I can’t speak highly enough of Ruckus in that respect.”

Morel is similarly enthusiastic. “We’re very pleased with our decision to work with Ruckus,” he said, adding that the company uses Ruckus equipment at most of the sites it serves, as the products provide features including good range and signal penetration, support for density connections with excellent throughput, and the ability to use multiple SSIDs with each access point. This allows a site to be covered with fewer access points, resulting in more cost-effective systems. “Choosing Ruckus was a great decision,” he said.