Cisco today said it supplied Service Provider Wi-Fi solution to GSMA to offer free Wi-Fi service to Mobile World Congress 2014 attendees.
The free Wi-Fi network covered 240,000 square meters of the Fira’s Gran Via venue for attendees and allowed exhibitors to offer Wi-Fi services in the eight exhibit halls.
In addition, Cisco worked with AT&T and Accuris Networks to provide secure authentication on the Wi-Fi network with a Hotspot 2.0 next-generation network allowing attendees to securely roam onto the Wi-Fi network.
Xavier Michavila, technology services director, Fira Barcelona, said: “We wanted a Wi-Fi network that was second to none and achieved that and more with Cisco. They helped us design and deploy the network and enable the Wi-Fi services available to more than 80,000 attendees.”
During MWC 2014, more than 80,000 attendees had access to free Wi-Fi and over the four days nearly 81,000 Internet-connected devices generated a total of 19.1 terabytes of traffic, showing a 300 percent year on year increase in the amount of traffic at the event.
Cisco said 33 percent of the traffic was used for highly-secure connections to business services such as email, closely followed by web browsing, Skype, Google Services and Facebook.
80,880 Internet-enabled devices were connected, doubling the number from the 2013 Mobile World Congress and touching 1.2 gigabytes per second of peak Internet traffic.
Five gigahertz (GHz) to 2.4 GHz ratio was 58 percent to 42 percent — indicating a shift to higher adoption of five GHz devices.
280 gigabytes uploaded and transmitted via a single access point in the Mobile World Congress Media Village on Monday, Feb. 24, 2014.
By 10:00 a.m. on Feb. 24, 2014, the number of connections had surpassed the total number of connections on last year’s network, ultimately reaching 22,126 peak-concurrent connections.
