Ruckus Wireless Inc., now part of Brocade have announced Ola Cabs has deployed a fast and reliable Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi network to improve and grow its cab network in India.
Ola Cabs is an online cab aggregator, providing a range of cab services from economy to luxury travel, and has a network of over 200,000 cars across 85 cities. As Ola Cabs continued its growth in India, it needed to ensure it could on-board new cars as quickly as possible at its attachment centres. However, Ola’s employees were experiencing connectivity issues when trying to attach new cabs to the network using the legacy 3G cellular connection.
Shwetank Singh, network and infrastructure engineer at Ola Cabs said
When a new driver or vehicle owner wants to join our transport network, we need to complete an operational and functional level audit to ensure the vehicles pass our requirements to validate their road worthiness and are of an appropriate standard. The problem was, the 3G wireless connection we typically use to support our token management system was not providing the speed and reliability we were expecting for connecting to our main server. Signal drop-outs, interference and limited range were commonplace, creating frustration amongst staff and drivers, as well as slowing down the attachment process.
Ola Cabs reached out to 3in IT Solutions to find a solution that offered the performance, security, ease of management, coverage and reliability required to overcome the challenges in the cab attachment process.
Proof of concept tests were conducted using Ruckus Wireless and a competitor’s wireless access points (APs) to determine which performed better in the outdoor environment. Following the tests, Ola Cabs selected Ruckus Wireless.
Shwetank Singh, network and infrastructure engineer at Ola Cabs adds
What really stood out during the testing phase was Ruckus’ patented smart antenna technologies. Its adaptive antenna was a real advantage, particularly over omni-directional antennas, as it provided greater connectivity, performance and stability, while reducing interference on the network.
Ola Cabs has deployed Ruckus ZoneFlex T301 dual-band 802.11ac outdoor APs across its outdoor cab attachment areas to support all the staff using tablets and laptops to log cab attachments. ZoneFlex T301 APs enable focused Wi-Fi coverage in the most challenging outdoor environments by mitigating interference and providing unmatched capacity and reliability, through the Ruckus patented BeamFlex technology.
Sudarshan Boosupalli, MD at Ruckus Wireless India & SAARC said
Key to the success of the installation is our patented BeamFlex Smart Wi-Fi antenna array technology. It monitors the environment and dynamically adjusts the signal to the best performing path, automatically steering around interference and obstacles. This ensures the strongest signal, highest throughput and least interference, enabling Ola Cabs staff to on-board vehicles over the Wi-Fi network quickly and efficiently, without the fear of drop-outs.
Ola Cabs has also deployed the Ruckus ZoneDirector 1200 to centrally manage its Wi-Fi network. The ZoneDirector 1200 can be deployed and operated by non-wireless experts and installed quickly and easily. It has been specifically designed for small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) with limited IT staff and budget, enabling them to create a robust and secure multimedia WLAN in a matter of minutes.
Shwetank Singh, network and infrastructure engineer at Ola Cabs adds
Since deploying Ruckus, we have seen significant improvement in terms of performance, coverage and reliability and it has also been easy to manage using the ZoneDirector. Being cab aggregators, the more cabs we attach the more our business grows. By deploying Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi, we have seen an uplift in our day-to-day business operations, as the frequent network problems slowing down the attachment process have been removed. Now with Ruckus in place, on boarding is happening at pace and is resulting in growth in the business.
Following the deployment in Bengaluru, Ola Cabs is looking to replicate the system in all its cab attaching centres across India.