The Golden Lions Rugby Union, in partnership with WirelessG (G-Connect), is preparing for tomorrow’s rugby test between the South African Springboks and New Zealand by making Ellis Park Stadium the first public WiFi enabled stadium hotspot in South Africa.
As part of its launch, G-Connect will sponsor free WiFi connectivity to all main-stand spectators for this coming Saturday’s Test match.
Carel van der Merwe, CEO of WirelessG, comments: “This new G-Connect Wi-Fi innovation will not only provide connectivity relief in high congestion sport stadiums that have become unbearable for South African mobile and broadband users, but will change the way real time sport entertainment is offered in this country.
“Spectators will soon be able to watch replays, listen to referee decisions and expert comments.
“All the excitement and energy inherent in a live entertainment environment such as this weekend’s Springbok Test will be disseminated via social media instantly from thousands of different angles.”
CEO of the Golden Lions Rugby Union, Manie Booysen, is thrilled at the opportunity to offer WiFi to supporters and staff at the stadium in future.
“I think it is an absolute privilege to be involved in this exciting launch ahead of the Test this weekend.
“We thank WirelessG for their efforts and for setting up this partnership with us. We sincerely hope the spectators, media and staff will enjoy this unique service.”
WirelessG and Ruckus Wireless have teamed up to combine their speciality offerings and deploy the G-Connect WiFi hotspot at Ellis Park with the possibility of expanding this new initiative to various stadiums throughout South Africa.
The WiFi network design is a first for South Africa in terms of density, size and capacity. Its design facilitates a 10Gbps network capacity, which will be required for content rich onsite broadcasting to mobile devices in the nearby future.
The G-Connect hotspot in Ellis Park is also capable of facilitating “WiFi offloading” to mobile operators to relieve 3G and GSM in-stadium congestion during high density events. In this regard, WirelessG will engage with mobile operators in the near future.
Spectators wanting to use the service on Saturday will need to enable WiFi on their devices, connect to the WiFi network named “G-Connect” and open their Internet browsers. A landing page interface will then be introduced from which the free G-Connect WiFi service can be accessed.