Mountain View Makes a Smart City Move Standardizing on Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi as Foundation for Public Access and Smart City Services

SUNNYVALE, Calif., July 16, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Ruckus Wireless, Inc. RKUS announced today that the City of Mountain View, CA has become the latest municipality to select and standardize on Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi products and technology for its free high-speed wireless public access service.  The Ruckus network also provides the foundation infrastructure to support future smart city services for Mountain View's city departments.

The City of Mountain View's new 'cmvwifi' free public Wi-Fi service adds to a growing list of these types of Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi network deployments around the world, including the City of San Francisco, San Jose, CA, Lincoln, NE, the City of York (UK), Vail, CO, Traverse, MI, Gunnison, CO, Larimer County, CO and many others.

The selection and deployment of Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi was part of an infrastructure upgrade to provide Mountain View residents with vastly improved service, designed to better handle the enormous increase in Internet usage due to the explosive growth of users armed with multiple mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

Available now throughout City Hall on Castro Street and the City Library on Franklin Street, including the public access areas directly outside these two buildings, Mountain View's free, public Wi-Fi service, 'cmvwifi' (the SSID or network name for the new service), is a shared community resource available for everyone's use. A key feature of the new network is once users initially log on to 'cmvwifi,' they don't have to log on again when going from one Ruckus-wired building to another, making the user experience simple, easy and seamless.

Mountain View has also just extended its improved public Wi-Fi network service to other city properties, including the city's community center and senior center, with plans to further expand the network to ten other public buildings in the city, including the new teen center, which is currently under construction. Additional network expansion plans being discussed include major public gathering areas in the 12+ square mile city, including the Center for Performing Arts as well as Civic Center Plaza.

"Our goal was to have a better-performing, free, city-provided Wi-Fi network available to residents and visitors whenever they're in or near a public, city-owned facility, and of course in the immediate areas surrounding them," said Steve Rodriguez, IT manager for the City of Mountain View. "Since we've upgraded our network, we've been very pleased with the performance and results thus far. We're even getting coverage in our garage at City Hall, where we can't get cellular coverage—we look forward to bringing more of our public facilities online as soon as possible with Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi."

The City of Mountain View's Ruckus-powered indoor public Wi-Fi network was designed and installed with the help of SmartWAVE Technologies, one of the nation's leading wireless network integrators, and replaces an older Wi-Fi network previously installed to provide free public access.

According to Rodriguez, Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi technology was selected over products from other vendors because it's been proven to overcome the physical and technical challenges of bringing high-speed, reliable wireless connectivity to large numbers of concurrent users accessing Wi-Fi services in high-density environments like public buildings—effectively addressing and solving these concerns—something that he and his staff discovered other vendors can't. Also, unlike conventional Wi-Fi technology, Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi is able to adapt Wi-Fi signals to constantly changing environmental conditions to ensure more stable and higher speed wireless connections to Wi-Fi enabled devices. Ruckus Wireless access points (APs) use patented Ruckus BeamFlex™ technology, specifically developed to deliver stronger signals at longer ranges to provide users with a fast and reliable wireless experience.

To enable 'cmvwifi', the City of Mountain View network has been built thus far with a combination of more than 50 Ruckus ZoneFlex™ 7982 and ZoneFlex 7372 indoor APs, connected by gigabit fiber connections and centrally managed with Ruckus ZoneDirector™ 3000 controllers located in the City's network operations centers.

Added Rodriguez, "Now that we've got the new network up, running and performing optimally for the public at City Hall and the library, we're moving forward quickly with expanding it elsewhere, and then we'll be setting up private SSIDs and a separate infrastructure to provide high-performance Wi-Fi service to our various city departments, including police and fire, plus others such as water and sewer, who can utilize this better performing Wi-Fi for running programs like our customized mapping software, and downloading work orders and reviewing training programs, which they'll be able to run on city-issued iPads and laptops while in the field. Wi-Fi frees these employees up from having to do these things at their desks, and thanks to our new Ruckus-powered Wi-Fi network, we can easily and confidently enable it."

Rodriguez concludes, "Since we've deployed the network, it's been so successful we've heard almost nothing about it from users, which means no complaints. It's all we could've hoped for. We're really happy with Ruckus—it just works."

ABOUT THE CITY OF MOUNTAIN VIEW

Nestled between the Santa Cruz Mountains and San Francisco Bay, Mountain View is a diverse community, ideally located in the heart of the Silicon Valley (10 miles north of San Jose and 35 miles south of San Francisco). At just over 12 square miles, the City is home to approximately 75,000 residents, many nationally and internationally known corporations, and a thriving small business base.

Mountain View prides itself on providing excellent public services and facilities that meet the needs of a caring and diverse community in a financially responsible manner. While leading the region in innovation and ideas, the City remains committed to the traditional values of strong neighborhoods and citizen involvement. Mountain View boasts strong safety and public education records and is considered one of the best places to live in the Bay Area.

ABOUT RUCKUS WIRELESS

Headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, Ruckus Wireless, Inc. RKUS is a global supplier of advanced wireless systems for the rapidly expanding mobile Internet infrastructure market. The company offers a wide range of indoor and outdoor "Smart Wi-Fi" products to mobile carriers, broadband service providers, and corporate enterprises, and has approximately 36,000 end-customers worldwide. Ruckus technology addresses Wi-Fi capacity and coverage challenges caused by the ever-increasing amount of traffic on wireless networks due to accelerated adoption of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Ruckus invented and has patented state-of-the-art wireless voice, video, and data technology innovations, such as adaptive antenna arrays that extend signal range, increase client data rates, and avoid interference, providing consistent and reliable distribution of delay-sensitive multimedia content and services over standard 802.11 Wi-Fi. For more information, visit http://www.ruckuswireless.com.

BeamFlex, Ruckus, Ruckus Wireless, ZoneDirector, and ZoneFlex are trademarks of Ruckus Wireless, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other product or company names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Media Contacts
Mark Priscaro
Ruckus Wireless
mark.priscaro@ruckuswireless.com
925-367-5505

Shonda Ranson
City of Mountain View
sranson@mountainview.gov
650-903-6302

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SOURCE Ruckus Wireless, Inc.