For the last ten years, a collaboration between the City of San José, CommScope’s (NASDAQ: COMM) RUCKUS Networks and SmartWAVE has been helping drive the Garden City’s smart city vision for safety, sustainability and economic growth.
“San José’s potential is limitless,” said Matt Mahan, Mayor, City of San José. “As the heart of Silicon Valley, we have a unique opportunity and a profound responsibility to harness technology to solve some of our biggest challenges. By collaborating with RUCKUS Networks, we are at the forefront of AI-driven Wi-Fi technology—which is helping us embrace a future where AI enhances connectivity and benefits all our residents.”
Commerce, transportation and community are a few of the elements that contribute to the positive growth of a city, and all require robust wireless connectivity. Today, thanks to several smart city projects, San José residents are never far away from the RUCKUS® technology that connects thousands of people at its schools, convention center, airport and throughout the community.
Closing the “Homework Gap”
With a third of students at the city’s East Side Union High School District (ESUHSD) unable to access broadband connectivity to do homework, school leaders were determined to close this homework gap. Using a $2.7 million school bond to fund an extension of the ESUHSD Wi-Fi® network to surrounding neighborhoods with new RUCKUS access points (APs), a RUCKUS SmartZone™ controller and RUCKUS AI™, the city and ESUHSD provided coverage where there had been none, eliminated spotty coverage and enabled smooth video playback and faster download speeds—all of which benefited the educational environment.
Today, thousands of low-income students can fully participate in ESUHSD’s digital curriculum. The school and the city have also expanded the program to seven additional high school attendance areas. Altogether, the city deployed more than 900 medium-density APs and an almost equal number of high-density APs throughout school grounds and surrounding neighborhoods.
Community Connectivity
Following the success of the ESUHSD project, the city launched an outdoor network to revitalize businesses and encourage people to visit downtown retailers and restaurants. Part of this effort involved deploying a Wi-Fi network using streetlight poles, traffic lights and city building rooftops for mounting RUCKUS APs. Proactive network optimization and troubleshooting with RUCKUS AI has ensured an uninterrupted Wi-Fi experience for all. Now, this network supports terabytes of data traffic and tens of thousands of community users and generates additional revenue for city services.
Upgrading Wi-Fi for Conventions
Due to increasing demands on Wi-Fi performance for high-density events at the McEnery Convention Center, exhibitors and attendees once complained about slow, spotty Wi-Fi service, but they now enjoy shared or dedicated bandwidth of up to one Gbps after the city installed 277 RUCKUS indoor and outdoor APs, 84 RUCKUS ICX® switches, a RUCKUS SmartZone controller and RUCKUS AI. Following this deployment, the center hosted a large gaming convention with 5,000 gamers streaming from a 10,000 square foot room. RUCKUS AI, with advanced AI and machine learning algorithms, has been instrumental in delivering a world-class connectivity experience for exhibitors and attendees at the center, despite continuously changing network conditions, applications and devices in use, and user behaviors.
With high-capacity, reliable Wi-Fi backed by a state-of-the-art wired network, the convention center now provides industry-leading technology to management, exhibitors, and attendees. Moreover, by expanding Wi-Fi coverage throughout adjacent hotels, the City of San José achieved its goal of providing a single, ubiquitous network for the whole area. Following the RUCKUS deployment, the convention center increased technology revenue more than 1,000%, and Team San José, Inc. (an economic development organization and San José's official Convention and Visitors Bureau), estimates that the deployment saved convention exhibitors up to 10% on technology service costs.
Airport Wi-Fi Service
Thanks to an upgrade to RUCKUS Wi-Fi equipment, San José Mineta International Airport (SJC) boasts one of the fastest airport Wi-Fi networks in the U.S. with average download speeds of 203 Mbps, according to independent third-party testing. This network carries multi-terabits of weekly traffic from tens of thousands of client devices, greatly improves travelers’ experiences and supports a range of new applications for airport officials. As a result, SJC has experienced one of the fastest rates of seat capacity growth among major U.S. airports, while the RUCKUS network’s cost-effectiveness has allowed the airport to eliminate advertising from its public Wi-Fi service.
The airport is outfitted with 189 RUCKUS Wi-Fi 6 indoor and outdoor APs and a RUCKUS SmartZone controller deployed in the cloud for managing the APs. The centrally-managed wired and wireless network with RUCKUS AI provides critical metrics for SJC to make informed operational decisions and ensure high service levels.
“The long-standing collaboration between RUCKUS Networks and the City of San José is a great showcase of our expertise in purpose-driven network infrastructure,” stated Bart Giordano, SVP and president, Networking, Intelligent Cellular and Security Solutions, CommScope. “The use of our AI-driven solutions at ESUHSD, the McEnery Convention Center, SJC and for the Access SJ Downtown project emphasizes the positive impact of RUCKUS solutions on San José’s smart city plans. We are proud that SJC was recently ranked as fastest airport Wi-Fi in the U.S. by a leader in connectivity intelligence.”
“Lead and never follow is a great representation of how the City of San José operates,” added Al Brown, CEO of SmartWAVE. “Their vision for service and safety to the community is unmatched in the market, and that’s a testament to their city leaders. At SmartWAVE, working with RUCKUS Networks, we’re appreciative of the opportunity to move their vision to reality using innovative technology solutions. The future is bright in San José and we’re thankful to be a part of it.”
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This press release includes forward-looking statements that are based on information currently available to management, management’s beliefs, as well as on a number of assumptions concerning future events. Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of performance and are subject to a number of uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results to differ materially from those currently expected. In providing forward-looking statements, the company does not intend, and is not undertaking any obligation or duty, to update these statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Source: CommScope