SAN JOSE, Calif. – September 26, 2017 – Cisco announces today it has collaborated with the GSMA, an organization which represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide and produces industry-leading events,  to successfully provide carrier-grade Wi-Fi network connectivity for its inaugural Americas event held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

The Cisco carrier-grade Wi-Fi solution allowed the GSMA to offer high-speed Wi-Fi services to more than 21,000 MWC Americas attendees as well as connectivity to participating exhibitors. Cisco has an ongoing partnership with the GSMA and has powered the Wireless LAN networks with its networking solutions for previous Mobile World Congress events held in Barcelona and Shanghai.

 “The GSMA has had a longstanding partnership with Cisco to provide the connectivity that is so critical to the success of Mobile World Congress events,” said Jon France, Information Technology Director, GSMA. “Cisco’s technology provided a robust, reliable network in a high-density and highly complex environment across the three sites of the Moscone Center. Together we delivered quality connectivity experiences for attendees and exhibitors.”

During the event, nearly 22,000 devices authenticated to the network, with 65 percent of them automatically roaming from their mobile operator’s cellular data network onto the event Wi-Fi network via Hotspot 2.0. Cisco has been an early proponent and ongoing supporter of Hotspot 2.0 in Wireless LAN solutions to enable highly secure and automatic authentication of mobile devices to the Wi-Fi network.   

“Delivering high-speed carrier-grade Wi-Fi service in a venue as large as the Moscone Center requires precise planning, monitoring and management,” said Yvette Kanouff, SVP/GM, Service Provider Business, Cisco. “In close collaboration with the GSMA and the Moscone Center, together we achieved another successful Mobile World Congress through the delivery of high-quality Wi-Fi connectivity. We are pleased to have been selected by the GSMA once again to make this happen and look forward to the possibility of collaborating in the future.”

Additonal Key Highlights:

• Cisco worked with the Moscone Center to augment the existing network with nearly 360 Cisco Aironet Access Points and over 145 Cisco Catalyst 9000 Series next generation switches, covering Moscone Center’s North, South and West exhibit halls.
• Cisco managed the Network Operations Center in Moscone South hall where dashboards showed attendees some of the real-time network performance and analytic metrics.
• Cisco also demonstrated Software-Defined Access (SDA), an innovative, next generation architecture for simplifying network operations, streamlining device provisioning and host onboarding, and automating policy and segmentation.
• An analysis of the MWC Americas network data traffic reveals some interesting metrics from the three-day event:
  • Nearly 22,000 Internet-enabled devices were connected
  • 500 MB per second of peak Internet traffic was achieved
  • 7.5 terabytes of data were carried throughout the conference
  • 78 percent of clients connected via 802.11ac protocol
  • Average data traffic per client was 227MB
  • Average Session Time per user was 48.42 minutes

Supporting Resources:

• Follow Cisco Twitter @CiscoSPMobility
• Follow us on our LinkedIn page
• Visit us at: Cisco Mobile Internet