Ruckus Wireless and Global Reach Technology will help to join San Francisco’s and San José’s Wi-Fi services, so that visitors can connect to both automatically without having to sign up twice.
The new service, which will be Hotspot 2.0-based, will make it easy for residents and visitors to move between one Wi-Fi network and another. San Francisco and San José are two of the first cities to make use of the new Wi-Fi standard, which is also known as Passpoint, reports computerworld.com.
Moreover, the pairing of the two networks is a significant achievement because at the moment they’re both totally independent from each other. San José started rolling out its free Wi-Fi in 2013 and currently has more than 400 hotspots within the city and its nearby airport. San Francisco also introduced Wi-Fi in 2013, which can be accessed from central Market Street. Although at present it can only be connected to from one location, the hotspots cover three miles.
Hotspot 2.0 not only makes connecting to the Wi-Fi easier, it also makes the process more secure. Global Reach gives each user who clicks connect a single-use provisioning file, which sets up the necessary Wi-Fi settings and encryption. After that, the user will automatically be online whenever they’re in close enough proximity to either network, reports cedmagazine.com.
Vijay Sammeta, chief information officer for the City of San José, doesn’t think the process could be any easier.
“With the adoption of Hotspot 2.0, we are literally transforming the user Wi-Fi experience,” he explained. “Hotspot 2.0 makes our infrastructure smarter by eliminating tedious and cumbersome device configuration. Now people can securely connect to and roam using our networks in a transparent fashion.”
