OneWiFi and CommScope team to make Footscray smart

March 4, 2020 10:58 Stuart Corner

Image © Shene81 used under CCA 3.0 Unported license.

Sydney based OneWiFi Australia, which claims to be Australia’s largest independent Wi-Fi managed service provider, has teamed up with global technology company CommScope to expand Footscray’s public Wi-Fi network to support smart city applications.

The Footscray Smart City for Social Cohesion Project is a joint initiative between Maribyrnong City Council and Melbourne’s Victoria University. It will, says OneWiFi, use Wi-Fi to facilitate a range of smart technologies including CommScope’s Ruckus SPOT location analytics to enable better access to educational, tourism and business information, and promote economic growth and tourism.

OneWiFi says the project will deliver smart city solutions in an integrated and harmonised manner to measure the movement of pedestrians, vehicle, cycle traffic and active transport in selected locations, as well as environmental monitoring, digital kiosks, and smart lighting.

Smart city with social cohesion

“The newly expanded Wi-Fi network and [our] Smart City Intelligent Platform will also facilitate data collection, storage, and sharing, as well as interface with the Social Cohesion Platform developed by Victoria University [to] drive innovation and enable insights into the happenings in Footscray,” OneWiFi said.

“For wide area networks, this data will be collected via media access control protocol, which is placed at selected locations and will help to enable future technology rollouts and the maintenance of smart city applications used in Footscray.”

Maribyrnong City Council awarded OneWiFi a contract to provide public access Wi-Fi in Footscray Mall and Little Saigon Plaza. Separately the company was chosen by the Maribyrnong Council / Victoria University consortium to facilitate the expansion of the existing wireless network to other areas in Footscray, including Footscray Park.

OneWiFi’s commercial and strategy director, Gary Tsang, said the company would work with both Maribyrnong City Council, Victoria University and CommScope to implement a suite of smart city applications on top of the Wi-Fi infrastructure to help build smart city capabilities in Footscray.

CommScope location analytics

CommScope’s director of sales enterprise, South Pacific, Murray Dickson, said CommScope’s collaboration with OneWiFi would provide for a myriad of smart city applications over the top of a network designed for public Wi-Fi.

“With some notable exceptions, the use case for public Wi-Fi as a standalone application has shifted,” he said. “The real value of these networks is realised when they are used as a foundation for other smart city applications based on wireless protocols such as ZigBee, LoRa and BLE.

“In this case, CommScope’s Ruckus SPOT location-based services help to support and complement other technology solutions and to provide insight into how areas such as Footscray can offer better services to citizens or improve efficiencies.”

What’s in OneWiFi Smart City suite?

OneWiFi launched its Smart City suite in May 2018, saying it would enable rapid, low cost implementation of smart services, and intelligent and actionable analysis.

“Cities, municipal and regional councils all across Australia will be able to deliver on the ‘smart city’ promise in an integrated and cost effective manner like never before,” the company said.

“OneWiFi’s Smart City solution suite brings together best-of-breed smart applications developed in-house and also via a number of strategic solution partners.”

The suite includes: