The Challenge
Irizar Southern Africa houses a production operation where coach bodies fully built and imported from Irizar Brazil are mated to locally assembled chassis supplied by major European brands. Irizar works with Farnell Wireless to provide customized Wi-Fi solutions for their customers of which Badela Transport is one.
Commuters or travellers making use of public transport expect to be connected to the internet during every part of their journey, whether in urban or rural areas. The lack of cellular coverage by mobile operators has so far hampered internet reception on the bus routes. Badela Transport take passengers between Cape Town and Umtata and wanted to supply internet for the customers on this route.
The Solution
Irizar SA wanted to offer a complete solution including local technical support to them and their end customers. They decided on Farnell Wireless’ Wi-Fionthemove (www.wifionthemove.co.za) solution. With this solution, the Irizar i6s models are now fitted with pre-configured hardware for a secure connection to the internet. Additionally, the coach operator gets a customized log-in page with their logo and any associated parameters such as access time, and portal advertising. On the hardware side, the solution consists of a Teltonika 955 Industrial Cellular Router and a Poynting PUCK antenna. The PUCK-5 is a 5-IN-1 antenna that includes 2X2 LTE Antennas, 2X2 Wi-Fi Antennas, and a GPS/GLONASS Antenna. This combination ensures access to the mobile networks in areas that were not accessible before.
The Result
The Wi-Fi uptake by the passengers has been great and feedback from the customer has been very positive. The customer gets analytics and feedback through the Linkyfi platform. The location of the coach and the performance of the router and antenna are monitored through their RMS remote management system.
Due to the positive feedback, Irizar SA now includes the router and PUCK as a value-add sales feature to the coach operator.
“Farnell Wireless has been supplying managed Wi-Fi onboard Irizar’s luxury i6s coaches for over 2 years. Most of their customers are operating over the border and out of the metros, where LTE signal coverage is poor, so the Poynting PUK-5 antenna was fitted to the Teltonika router, to optimise the quality of the LTE, Wi-Fi, and GPS connection. The results have been outstanding.”
–Justin Farnell – WIFiontheMove.
