Wales & West Housing, in collaboration with Meraki and British Telecom, recently reached its first milestone in deploying its free tenant wi-fi project powered by Meraki wireless access points.
So far, six networks comprising 34 MR12 access points have been installed in both North and South Wales, providing connections for over 250 separate devices.
The points are installed in Wales & West Housing’s residential properties as part of its digital inclusion programme and supports the organisation’s plan to roll out free wi-fi to as many of its tenants across Wales as possible.
Wales & West Housing has also been working with BT’s Digital Champions as part of the scheme, with BT arranging for pupils from local schools to provide coaching sessions for older tenants and showing them how to use Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Google.
The scheme will eventually result in more than 300 access points in over 100 locations across Wales, with the ease of administration using the Meraki Cloud Dashboard proving critical to enabling the delivery of the project.
Marc Pensom, ICT infrastructure manager, Wales & West Housing said, “The ease of configuration and management via the cloud dashboard makes the administration of large numbers of devices feasible for a relatively small central team.
“The scheme enables tenants to use the internet in their own home whenever they want, using equipment of their choice. By the end of the project, we will have provided almost 3,000 tenants with access to the internet.”
