{"id":19766,"date":"2018-06-21T14:08:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T13:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=19766"},"modified":"2018-06-22T10:10:47","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T09:10:47","slug":"new-research-highlights-growing-demand-for-wi-fi-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2018\/06\/21\/new-research-highlights-growing-demand-for-wi-fi-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"New research highlights growing demand for \u2018Wi-Fi everywhere\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ruckus Networks, an ARRIS company, and World Wide Worx, have released the results of their <em>2018 Wi-Fi in South Africa <\/em>study which highlights the usage, priorities, intentions and attitudes regarding Wi-Fi technology and its deployment in smart cities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe research reveals the growing importance of Wi-Fi for both business use and local Smart City project roll-outs,\u201d said Arthur Goldstuck, Managing Director at World Wide Worx. \u201cWhile the need for Wi-Fi is growing, there are still a few hurdles that South Africa need to overcome if we are to truly reap the benefits of pervasive connectivity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wi-Fi is critical in corporations <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The research shows that 97% of corporations and 95% of small businesses use Wi-Fi internally, with over half of these respondents stating the need for Wi-Fi access everywhere as very important. This statistic indicates that Wi-Fi has become critical to employee activity and further demonstrates the trends for small businesses are in line with larger enterprises.<\/p>\n<p>However, despite the enthusiasm for pervasive Wi-Fi, large businesses in South Africa limit out-of-office use, solely depending on in-house use.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Half of the respondents said their entire staff are using Wi-Fi internally, with the rest reporting a sliding scale<\/li>\n<li>External use, on the other hand, flipped this trend around, with 59% saying they did not allow external use of Wi-Fi to access the corporate network, with a sliding scale declining to 13% saying they allowed all staff to access the network from external Wi-Fi<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Wi-Fi quality is more important than cost<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is a common misconception that, when making a purchasing decision, businesses consider the low cost of a provider\u2019s service above all else. This study shows that this is untrue for Wi-Fi services. Findings for cost, quality, speed and constant connectivity for Wi-Fi showed:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A total of 94% of respondents ranked quality of Wi-Fi connection to be the most important factor, followed by speed and constant connectivity ranked both at 92%<\/li>\n<li>Cost ranked last out of the four options \u2013 at 81%<\/li>\n<li>A total of 93% of respondents said all four factors \u2013 quality of connection, speed, constant connectivity and cost were equally important<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The findings for uses of Wi-Fi indicated the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A total of 86% of large businesses predominantly use Wi-Fi for IoT security and monitoring, 80% for connection to the intranet and 70% for cloud integration and adoption<\/li>\n<li>Small businesses use Wi-Fi predominantly for connection to the Internet and Intranet (95%), followed by cloud adoption and IoT integration<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These findings suggest that larger enterprises have more clearly defined needs and uses for Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n<p>Respondents were also given the option to rank from 1 to 10 (with 10 being highest) the level of importance for various features when selecting a service provider.<\/p>\n<p>The most important criteria was quality of service at 94%, followed by maintenance and support at 92% while 83% of respondents ranked price as important, but it was only seventh on the overall list.<\/p>\n<p>These findings suggest the criticality of quality and service for Wi-Fi deployments. It is clear that most large businesses would rather pay more for a better service, underlining the fact that Wi-Fi has become mission-critical in the corporate environment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Recognising the value of smart cities<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While South Africa is still a long way from having a true smart city, business decision-makers have a strong awareness of its benefits and 95% believed that wider availability of Wi-Fi would contribute to a smart city strategy. When asked what the major benefits are of smart cities, more than a third cited boosting the economy, while a similar proportion saw it attracting new businesses. Just under a third said it would reduce operating costs.<\/p>\n<p>However, a significant proportion (75.5%) of businesses don\u2019t feature smart city projects in their budgets. Since smart cities is a relatively new concept and no South African city has a clear programme in place to achieve this, the 24.5% proportion of businesses who budget for smart cities can be considered relatively high. Even more, a substantial proportion (37.8%) of companies expect to have a budget for smart city projects in the future.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Barriers to smart cities <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The findings for smart cities barriers include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A total of 76% of respondents indicated that fibre infrastructure is the biggest tech barrier to smart cities roll-out. This was followed by the lack of an IoT eco-system, no unified view for the city and infrastructure stability<\/li>\n<li>Approximately 20% of respondents found the barrier to smart cities were non-technology related with the lack of funding cited by 71% of respondents<\/li>\n<li>This was followed by the cost of access at 40%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These findings suggest that financial issues are the core challenge facing Smart Cities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis research indicates that a strong reliable Wi-Fi network is critical for South African businesses and Smart City deployments,\u201d said Riaan Graham, Sales Director for Ruckus Networks, Sub-Saharan Africa. \u201cAlthough there are still several hurdles to overcome, it is reassuring to see a widespread belief that Smart Cities can provide value to the economy and citizens, with Wi-Fi as the \u2018glue\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A smart city requires strong, reliable information and communication technology infrastructure to support the latest iterations of connectivity.<\/p>\n<p>This does not mean fixed-line should fall by the wayside. Instead, being smart requires a cross-platform approach that combines the best of class with the best infrastructure to deliver digital services catering for business and consumer needs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ruckus Networks, an ARRIS company, and World Wide Worx, have released the results of their 2018 Wi-Fi in South Africa study which highlights the usage, priorities, intentions and attitudes regarding Wi-Fi technology and its deployment in smart cities. \u201cThe research reveals the growing importance of Wi-Fi for both business use and local Smart City project [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":19767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[298,103,399,54,262],"tags":[5168,5727,5728,578,83,5726,2194],"class_list":["post-19766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main-story-newsletter","category-mobile","category-more-news","category-research","category-used","tag-arris","tag-arthur-goldstuck","tag-managing-director","tag-ruckus-networks","tag-wi-fi","tag-wi-fi-in-south-africa-study","tag-world-wide-worx"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19766"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19806,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19766\/revisions\/19806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}