Earlier this month in San Jose, California, Maxima Telecom’s WiFi network in the Moscow subway was honored at the WBA Wi-Fi Industry Awards as the “Best Wi-Fi Deployment in a City or Public Area.”
Task complexity and scale, the approach to monetization, service quality, and market impact were among the jury’s key criteria.
Open to the whole industry, the WBA awards attract entries from vendors and operators across the world. The contest is organized each year by the Wireless Broadband Alliance, an international industry association focused on driving next generation Wi-Fi and its role in the Public Wi-Fi services, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Converged Services, Smart Cities and 5G.
“The competition this year included a wide variety of technologies and business ideas. Public WiFi is maturing, so there are multiple areas of innovation that range from network management systems to LTE integration and location-based services,” said jury member Joe Madden from Mobile Experts.
“It’s a great time to be involved in the ecosystem because innovation is becoming more practical. Companies are applying their knowledge and expertise to specific real-world issues,” he added.
“A project with no equals”
“[Our Moscow metro] project has no equals in the world. Moscow is still the only city where the service is free for passengers onboard a train,” Maxima Telecom underlined.
“Our Moscow Metro project is unique,” said the company’s co-founder and chairman Sergei Aslanyan. “Trains move through curved tunnels, making the provision of stable wireless communication a challenging task. Using a number of technologies […], we have equipped over 650 trains, and currently Wi-Fi is available on all metro lines. We have recently launched a pilot project to provide Wi-Fi service on the platforms of four metro stations.”
Maxima Telecom was the only bidder of the Moscow authorities’ tender in 2013, “while other service providers were scared off by unattractive terms,” according to Maxima Telecom. The bid terms required the winner to build, at its own expenses, a network to provide passengers with free Internet access in exchange for privileged access to the metro infrastructure.
Thus Maxima Telecom installed base stations, laid optical and electric cables, and equipped cars with receivers and transmitters. Total investment exceeded 2 billion rubles with no government support, according to the company.
WiFi has been available on all lines since December 2014, covering over 5,400 cars. The network delivers up to 100 Mbps per train, generating up to 7o TB of Internet traffic across the network daily.
Sources: WBA, Maxima Telecom.
