Over 1,500 maternity and children’s hospitals across China are deploying a Wi-Fi network using equipment from Ruckus Wireless, marking the largest Wi-Fi deployment to date for maternity and children’s hospitals in the country.
The rollout, conducted in collaboration with Ruckus Wireless and BBLink Shanghai, comes at a time where smartphone Wi-Fi usage is on the rise as China’s smartphone adoption is witnessing an exponential increase.
According to a report by emarketer.com, more than half of all mobile phone users in China will own and use a smartphone in 2015, owing to the rise of affordable, domestically produced devices combined with escalating income. This increased rate of usage combined with China’s densely populated healthcare institutions necessitates a robust and reliable access to Wi-Fi within these spaces.
To address this demand, BBLink worked with Ruckus to deploy more than 5,700 Ruckus access points, as well as a Ruckus WLAN controller in some of China’s top maternity hospitals, such as Shanghai First Maternity and Infant Hospital.
The deployment is expected to further transform patients’ access to maternity care, where the Internet of Things is projected to revolutionalize the digital healthcare experience like never before.
“BBLink is aiming to build a nationwide wireless network that will enhance the medical consultation and pregnancy experience for mothers-to-be in China. Given the scale of this deployment, the Wi-Fi network’s architecture is of vital importance,” BBLink technical support manager Cui Hailong said.
“We have also considered factors such as scalability, flexibility, maintenance operativity, system stability, as well as investment and maintenance costs.”
BBLink is looking at collaborating with Ruckus to deploy an additional 10,000 access points to expand the coverage of the Smart Wi-Fi network to around 2,000 maternity and children’s hospitals across China.