Wi-Fi Offloading, Why? – Chapter 10
Two Very Different Use Cases – Swisscom
Let’s pick two Enea customers to illustrate two very different use cases and deployment models of Wi-Fi Offloading. In this post, we will discuss how Swisscom has built an extensive Wi-Fi service, including B2B Wi-Fi. In the next post, we will talk about Three UK utilizing a third-party Wi-Fi network to provide selective Wi-Fi Offloading.
White Paper: Wi-Fi Offloading – Why?
This is an excerpt from our white paper, Wi-Fi Offloading – Why? The full white paper is available here if you like what you read. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
Using B2B Wi-Fi to Create Indoor Footprint
Swisscom is a major telecommunications player headquartered in Switzerland. Its public Wi-Fi service, known as PWLAN (Public Wireless LAN), is a large-scale service covering 6,200 hotspots with 70,000 access points and has been in operation since 2002. Swisscom is widely regarded as a pioneer, launching the world’s first commercial service utilizing SIM authentication in 2004. In 2013, Enea (Aptilo) replaced a few critical components in Swisscom’s Wi-Fi Core system. Swisscom went “all-in” with us in 2019 when the Enea Aptilo Service Management Platform (SMP) replaced the three existing Wi-Fi Core system vendors.
Today, enabled by the Enea Aptilo SMP, the network has nearly 3 million unique users, consuming roughly 3,000 terabytes of data monthly.
Providing a managed business-to-business (B2B) Wi-Fi service is the best way to build an indoor footprint of public Wi-Fi for subscribers and mobile data offloading while making money. Around 80% of the 40 million monthly user sessions go through the SMP SIM Authentication functionality, providing subscribers with a seamless and secure user experience. Swisscom works with various verticals, from single sites to multi-branch corporations, and constantly seeks the optimal footprint for its public Wi-Fi service.
The Challenge
To cater to a rapidly growing market of small and large businesses, some of them utilizing their own Wi-Fi access equipment, Swisscom needed to create a flexible and competitive Wi-Fi service that would:
- Allow them to roll out new services in minutes instead of weeks.
- Be competitively priced for smaller businesses and startups.
- Be agile enough to adjust and adapt in real-time.
- Be less dependent on hardware and instead use software-defined functions.
- Make the technology user-friendly with easy-to-use dashboards.
The company needed a cloud-native, software-defined deployment solution that could scale economically and streamline its B2B offerings.
“Enea deserves our trust after the flawless operation of our Public Wi-Fi Core functions since 2013. Merging all Public Wi-Fi Core functions to Enea Aptilo SMP has reduced risk, increased our operational efficiency, and saved costs. We also get more rapid growth in new functionality and innovations as we share the same software with many other leading operators.”
Goran Spirov, Product Manager, SwisscomThe Solution
Working with Enea, Swisscom could take a software-defined network (SDN) approach and tailor it to appeal to businesses of various sizes in different industries. Apart from the Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Calling services enabled by Enea, service options include WAN, LAN, SIP trunks, hosted PBX, VoIP lines, Swisscom TV, internet access, firewall, DDoS protection, remote access, and cloud access.
The Result
With this new cloud service powered by Enea, Swisscom is taking a leap in operator-managed guest Wi-Fi for the masses, capable of successfully competing with the many cloud services already on the market. Business customers now have seamless access to:
- Affordable managed Guest Wi-Fi.
- A range of new services with the click of a button via the services dashboard.
- Rapid deployment of new services within a matter of minutes.
- Real-time monitoring and usage statistics via an enhanced analytics engine.
- Wi-Fi calling guarantees the very best call quality in areas with weak cellular reception.
Swisscom led the way into carrier Wi-Fi services. Now, once again, they are taking the pole position in the future of operator-managed Wi-Fi services.
Recorded session from July 23, 2024
Solutions for mobile / Wi-Fi convergence
As the mobile industry enters a new and much less profitable era, Wi-Fi is growing in importance as an effective, cost-efficient, and necessary complementary solution.
View this Wi-Fi Now special event recording from July 23 with Cisco, American Bandwidth, and Enea, where we explore all the current convergence offerings and their status.
When: Available on-demand.
Duration: Approximately 2 hours including presentations, panel Q&A, and audience Q&A.
