Deutsche Telekom to Deploy 'HotSpot Plug'n'Play' Program Using Cisco Meraki

Telecom operators are facing increasing demand on their networks as the adoption rate of smart mobile devices continues to increase globally. Companies are needing to increase their capacity in areas they already cover because of higher traffic loads from growing smartphone penetration, cloud services and video communications, resulting in higher per-subscriber traffic. Therefore, small cells and Wi-Fi have become necessary to meet the demand and deliver the capacity that is needed. Deutsche Telekom has announced a new program that will be using the Cisco Meraki and Intercloud technologies to provide the service without exhausting its large cell infrastructure.

The "HotSpot Plug‘n'Play" from Deutsche Telekom will provide SMBs as well as cafes, hotels, or shops the ability to offer a robust Wi-Fi service on their property. The Meraki wireless solution is designed for easy deployment out of the box without additional purchases.

According to the operator, all its customers have to do is connect to the Internet and power on the unit. When it is connected to the Meraki cloud, it will be a Deutsche Telekom hot spot, allowing users to browse at no charge.

The Meraki platform includes a wide range of features to ensure connectivity and security, including:

• Centralized management that can monitor campus-wide Wi-Fi deployments and distributed multi-site networks from a single pane-of-glass.
• Identify BYOD clients and automatically apply access policies by device or user group.
• Analytics with CMX Location to capture different metrics such as visitor capture rate, user visit time, and repeat visits by listening for wireless devices.
• Visibility and control of applications by identifying which ones are being used, and then prioritize critical apps while limiting recreational apps.
• High capacity 802.11ac with automatic RF optimization by measuring Wi-Fi channel utilization, signal strength, throughput, and interference with real-time spectrum analysis that enables high performance wireless in dense, demanding environments.

With security in the mind of anyone that gets online, Meraki has a dedicated security radio that can detect interference, vulnerabilities, and attacks on all channels instantly. It also includes an identity-based-firewall capable of automatically assigning firewall and traffic shaping rules, VLAN tags, and bandwidth limits to enforce the right policies for each class of users.

"Cisco Meraki helped us develop HotSpot Plug'n'Play very fast," said Dirk Backofen, Vice President Business Marketing Telekom Deutschland. "We can manage thousands of access points through one cloud dashboard, which makes this widespread infrastructure easy to handle. Our customers can set up a quality hot spot in seconds and don't need technical skills to do so."

The latest Cisco Visual Networking Index has revealed that by 2019, 58 percent of Germany's mobile data traffic will be offloaded to femtocells and Wi-Fi. With more than half of the country’s capacity being handled by small cell technology, operators have to deploy tried and proven platforms to ensure access at all times. Meraki networks have more than 200 thousand deployments in 147 countries around the world.