Huawei and Mexico Build Largest Public Wi-Fi in Latin America

Customer Background

In 2013, the Mexican government proposed a five-year national digital strategy — México Conectado. The objective is to increase the national broadband coverage rate. This allows more people, including students in remote areas, to access the Internet and use new technologies. With this strategy, the digital divide is narrowed and government work efficiency is improved. To achieve its objectives, Mexico planned to build 250,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the country by 2018, covering schools, hospitals, clinics, health service centers, community centers, government agencies, and public places. After completion, this project would be implemented and operated by Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT).

Challenges

Vast territory and complex geographical environment

Among the 65,000 hotspots deployed in 2014, more than 30,000 hotspots are located in remote rural areas. In some regions, high temperatures and frequent thunderstorms can cause product faults.

Scattered sites make deployment, delivery, and management difficult

A large network consists of tens of thousands of devices including Access Points (APs), switches, and firewalls. The Management Center connects to devices through the carrier’s Wide Area Network (WAN). Additionally, devices from multiple vendors coexist, causing complex network management challenges and difficulty in locating faults.

Public networks prone to  illegal use

The public wireless network must ensure the validity of guest identities and prevent unauthorized or illegal use. This requires simplified authentication processes and improved network utilization.

Solution

Multiple-scenario Wi-Fi solution allows various wireless city applications

In remote rural areas with high temperatures and frequent thunderstorms, Huawei outdoor APs are deployed. These APs are IP67 rated and designed to withstand dust and rain. The APs can work with humidity ranging from 0% to 100% (non-condensing) and in a temperature range of –40°C to +60°C. The APs use a full-metal shell design and come with built-in surge protectors on antenna ports, network ports, and AC power supply ports. Because one Huawei outdoor AP is equivalent to a combination of common outdoor APs, the design saves costs. A single Huawei outdoor AP provides four antenna surge protectors, one network port surge protector, and one AC surge protector. Faults caused by multiple passive components are avoided, which improves stability and reliability. Huawei APs promote service applications such as distance learning and telemedicine for people in remote areas.

Huawei’s indoor APs are used in densely-populated indoor scenarios such as enterprise offices, schools, medical institutions, shopping malls, retail stores, and government headquarters and branches. These cost-effective APs deliver ubiquitous wireless access services to high-density areas.

Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) achieves quick service provisioning

With Huawei’s WAN solution, including ZTP with firewalls, switches, and APs, connect to Wide Local Area Networks (WLANs) which can be automatically configured across the entire network after the USG6300 firewall is deployed at each branch. This improves overall delivery efficiency by 90 percent.

WLAN full-lifecycle management and simpler Operations and Maintenance (O&M)

Huawei and third-party devices are uniformly managed from the entire network, to branches, and across the WAN. This improves the efficiency of locating faults at remote sites. User experience Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be viewed layer by layer. Root causes of deterioration are provided based on data analysis, and optimization suggestions are offered, thereby improving network O&M efficiency.

Interconnection with third-party social media to simplify the authentication process and ensure validity of guest identities

Interconnection with mainstream social media such as WeChat, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are supported. Pushing of enterprises’ customized pages facilitates secondary marketing. Users have access to the Wi-Fi network with an existing account. This simplifies registration and ensures validity of user identities through social media.

Customer Benefits

Nationwide Wi-Fi hotspots enable more people to obtain network services and benefit from information technologies, effectively bridging the “digital divide.”

Future Plans

Huawei assists Mexico in constructing more than 30,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots in the México Conectado project. This project serves 18 million users each year and links over 100 million Mexicans in approximately 2 million square-kilometers of land via the Internet. A large number of citizens obtain network services and have access to information technologies. In addition, the government plans to complete the construction of tens of thousands of new Wi-Fi hotspots by the end of 2020.