Mobile broadband innovators Stoke and SOLiD are introducing the ‘GameChanger™ Neutral Host Wi-Fi Offload Solution’ for wireless operators and venue owners – an end-to-end system that solves mobile capacity problems when the concentration of traffic overwhelms available cellular network capacity. GameChanger combines SOLiD’s INFINITY ACCESS™ Optical Network Transport solution with Stoke’s Wi-Fi eXchange gateway to deliver carrier-class access over Wi-Fi at sports stadiums, transit systems, concerts, or other major venues.This is a game-changing offering for large crowd scenarios, especially at sports events where fans expect adequate throughput performance for mobile applications as an enriching part of their overall experience.
“Venues and operators alike have difficulties providing cost-effective, quality coverage with sufficient bandwidth to serve huge crowds. The networks they typically deploy are rapidly overrun at peak times leading to outages, slow response times, and user frustration,” said Dave Williams, CTO at Stoke. “The solution solves challenges of capacity, cost and quality, and transforms a poor cellular experience in high density public areas into a win-win-win scenario for users, operators and venue owners.”
“GameChanger applies the benefits of a ‘neutral host’ Distributed Antenna System (DAS) model to WiFi Offload for the first time, providing each wireless operator with the equivalent of their own high-capacity WiFi network with virtually unlimited backhaul,” said Seth Buechley, President at SOLiD. “At less than half the cost of doing it alone, the system makes it possible for venues and wireless providers to work together to ensure quality of service for subscribers and an unique game day experience for fans.”
Across-the-board Advantages
Venue owners will enhance their brand and attract greater, more consistent attendance by delivering a superior event experience for the sports fan or venue visitor:
− While traditional Venue wireless ISP arrangements leave venue owners blind to the online activities of visitors to their site, GameChanger offers insights that enable venue owners to create compelling, competitive new services.
− They can deliver a fan experience that meets the goals of sports league governing bodies.
− Owners can benefit from lower Internet connectivity costs through reciprocal arrangements with participating network operators.
− Rich capabilities and varied configuration options allow them to work with operators to rapidly test different business models for specific environments, while still providing an enhanced quality of service to existing customers.
Operators receive the cost reduction and cellular subscriber satisfaction advantages available via an offloaded local cellular network in the area immediately around the venue.
− The participating carriers can keep customers on their own network and choose the size of their own proprietary backhaul pipe.
− They can leverage granular authentication, metering and routing capabilities to permit reciprocal charging between venue and operator.
− Leveraging the turnkey solution, they benefit from ease of deployment, reduced operating expenses and enhanced brand value.
Visitors or Fans benefit from the seamless Wi-Fi sign-on experience and a mobile broadband experience unblemished by poor quality streaming video and slow Internet response.
– The mobile broadband experience becomes a seamlessly accessible and consistent service that does not require day passes or other cumbersome sign on.
Solution Components
Stoke Wi-Fi eXchange Multi-Tenant Session Director: The Stoke Wi-Fi eXchange aggregates traffic from Wi-Fi access points, then authenticates, meters and routes the traffic to the Internet, to local content or advertising services, distributors or cellular partners. Serving multiple network operators’ subscribers simultaneously and implementing their specific authentication and traffic routing policies, Wi-Fi sessions are rapidly directed to their desired locations.
SOLiD INFINITY ACCESS Optical Network Transport: INFINITY ACCESS enables a secure, hardware-agnostic and scalable fiber WiFi network infrastructure that delivers dedicated carrier-grade high capacity at a low cost-per-bit. Based upon advanced DWDM-PON technology (dense wavelength division multiplexing; passive optical network), each innovative INFINITY ACCESS terminal serves up to 16 Access Points (APs) using just a single strand of fiber with no sharing of bandwidth between APs. SOLiD’s patented true colorless INFINITY TUNABLE LASER™ lowers OPEX through Plug-and-Play self-provisioning which reduces turn-up of service to minutes – not days – and significantly minimizes sparing costs.
GameChanger is Wi-Fi vendor neutral. It interoperates seamlessly with existing and new Wi-Fi system providers, and connects to mobile operators via standard interfaces – either directly or via an intermediary service provider – for authentication, authorization and user traffic routing.
