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| Ellis Park Stadium |
South Africa’s Golden Lions Rugby
Union in partnership with internet provider WirelessG (G-Connect) announced
today that in preparation for this weekend’s rugby test between the South
African Springboks and New Zealand, Ellis Park Stadium has become the first
public Wi-Fi enabled stadium hotspot in South Africa.
As part of its launch, G-Connect
will sponsor free Wi-Fi connectivity to all main-stand spectators for this
coming Saturday’s rugby Test.
The G-Connect Wi-Fi Hotspot at
Ellis Park Stadium will be proclaimed as the first ‘Sport Stadium Wi-Fi
Hotspot’ of its kind available to the public in South Africa. Carel van der
Merwe, Wi-Fi entrepreneur and CEO of WirelessG comments, “This new G-Connect Wi-Fi
innovation will not only provide connectivity relief in high congestion sport
stadiums that have become unbearable for South African mobile and broadband
users, but will change the way real time sport entertainment is offered in this
country.”
“Spectators will soon be able to
watch replays, listen to referee decisions and expert comments. All the
excitement and energy inherent in a live entertainment environment such as this
weekend’s Springbok Test will be disseminated via social media instantly from
thousands of different angles.”
CEO of the Golden Lions Rugby
Union, Manie Booysen, is thrilled at the opportunity to offer Wi-Fi to
supporters and staff at the stadium in future. “I think it is an absolute
privilege to be involved in this exciting launch ahead of the Test this weekend
“We thank WirelessG for their efforts and for setting up this partnership with
us. We sincerely hope the spectators, media and staff will enjoy this unique
service.”
WirelessG and Ruckus Wireless
have teamed up to combine their speciality offerings and deploy the G-Connect
Wi-Fi hotspot at Ellis Park with the possibility of expanding this new
initiative to various stadiums throughout South Africa. The Wi-Fi network
design is a first for South Africa in terms of density, size and capacity. Its
design facilitates a 10 Gigabits per second network capacity, which will be
required for content rich onsite broadcasting to mobile devices in the nearby
future.
What makes this deployment unique
is the highly scientific in which various technologies throughout the network
are combined to commercialize and facilitate the capacity requirements of this
high density site. G-Connect hotspot in Ellis Park is also capable of
facilitating “Wi-Fi Offloading” to mobile operators to relieve 3G and GSM
in-stadium congestion during high density events. In this regard, WirelessG
will engage with Mobile operators in the near future. Spectators wanting to use
the service on Saturday will need to enable Wi-Fi on their devices, connect to
the Wi-Fi network named “G-Connect” and open their internet browsers. A landing
page interface will then be introduced from which the free G-Connect Wi-Fi
service can be accessed.
“Taking into consideration that
WirelessG launched G-Connect In-Flight Wi-Fi
less than 17 months ago, the deployment of the Wi-Fi hotspot at Ellis
Park Stadium can be regarded as WirelessG`s
second first for South Africa. This clearly distinguishes WirelessG as
the leading Wi-Fi specialist in South Africa,” says van der Merwe.
“We laud this innovation from our
partner G-Connect. In celebration of Saturday’s record setting Wi-Fi
connectivity at Ellis Park’s main pavilion, Mango and G-Connect have also
discounted in-flight Wi-Fi usage to R5 on any Mango domestic flight during
October. As recently as five years ago, it would have been impossible to
predict the immense impact that social media and mobility would have in our
world,” says Mango CEO Nico Bezuidenhout.
From itnewsafrica.com
