Lok Appliances Selected by Qmax
San Jose, CA – Lok Technology announced today that QMax Communications Pte Ltd is deploying its wireless fidelity (WiFi) network management and control appliances to service the west sector of Singapore as part of the government sponsored Wireless@SG initiative.
Wireless@SG is part of the Infocomm Development Authority’s (IDA) masterplan, Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) that will transform the country into an “intelligent nation” and connect businesses, households, government, and roaming users by providing broadband Internet access across the island. For the first three years QMax provides “basic” free Internet access with a minimum of 512 Kbps bandwidth available for users accessing the internet from one of the over 2000 hotspots being deployed in their “West Sector”. QMax subscribers requiring bandwidth above 512 Kbps or other premium access services will be able to sign up for a variety of fee based plans in the QMax coverage area. Once connected, users are able to access all normal Internet-based services (e.g. online gaming, web surfing, instant messaging, VoIP and email).
Providing wireless Internet access requires WiFi radios that deliver to and receive signals from laptops and other IP enabled devices like computers, PDAs, and WiFi phones, be installed in each hotspot or hotzone. Once connected data is passed between the radios and the Internet through LokBox appliances that authenticate subscribers and delivers the right amount of bandwidth to each user depending on their access plan (premium or free). The LokBox also enables location-based advertising to be delivered to subscribers by businesses in or close to the hotspot, or subject sensitive advertising based on user search criteria. Finally the LokBox aggregates bandwidth and creates a load balanced, highly available connection from the QMax Data Centre to the Internet
“The QMax / Lok Technology collaboration is a natural fit. QMax’s business experience, knowledge of Internet service delivery, and commitment to excellence united with Lok’s expertise in management and control of revenue generating networking (RGN) is a powerful combination enabling high-quality Wi-Fi services for our customers,” said Alex Tan, QMax Director. “We selected the LokBox appliances to manage the network because of the highly integrated nature of their appliance, incredible breadth of applications and their reputation for delivering high-speed, high quality products to our specific industry.
Traditionally hotspot service providers and ISP’s build extensive computing, networking and storage infrastructures to deliver Internet services. This requires large capital expenditures, expensive and time consuming integration and legions of technical support personnel to install and support this data center equipment. This drives up the cost of service delivery and makes providing quality service extremely expensive. With the LokBox this mass of disparate equipment is reduced to one appliance to purchase, install, integrate, operate and support.
With LokBox appliances performing such a critical function QMax is able to increase network performance and reduce costs and complexities, improving both the customer experience and the QMax bottom line. Utilizing LokBox technology QMax can centrally manage and both its indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots and hotzones ensuring a high speed and highly available user experience.
“We are absolutely delighted to be part of the Wireless@SG initiative and are especially proud of our relationship with QMax. Their knowledge of the ISP market and their existing service capability made our job easy “, said Keenan Klinger, President of Lok Technology. QMax is a very demanding partner and one that values their customers above all else. This project is very exciting, and we are very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the iN2015 masterplan.
The LokBox shared memory architecture and out-of-order packet-processing technology are unique in the industry and are essential to effectively running RGNs. Just as disparate routers, firewalls, intrusion protection systems, authentication servers, web cache devices, link bonding switches and bandwidth priority and allocation systems serve as traffic-management systems for wired networks, the LokBox appliances use sophisticated mathematical algorithms and integration techniques to combine these functions into a single appliance for wireless networks. The quality of a Wi-Fi network depends on to the ability of the equipment to aggregate, route and validated traffic intelligently, efficiently and dependably – with as few moving parts as possible.
About Lok Technology, Inc.
Lok Technology is a leading provider of gateways and centralized-authentication appliances designed to manage, provision, and protect revenue-generating networks. LokBox appliances offer customer networks of all sizes a single integrated network-provisioning appliance for cost-effective and scalable network deployments. Lok’s patent-pending shared-memory and out-of-order packet-processing technology are unique in the industry, allowing an unprecedented number of concurrent users to be categorized based upon policy and role-authentication. All of the functions and features required in today’s revenue-generating policy-enforcement networks are bundled in one LokBox appliance. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Lok Technology has a worldwide sales and technical support organization, along with a global network of resellers and integrators. AsiaFlux Networks is a major reseller of Lok Technology products in Asia. Learn more at www.asiaflux.com
About QMax Communications Pte Ltd
QMax is a broadband infrastructure and technology company offering “Anytime, Anywhere” high speed wireless broadband connectivity. In March 2006, it became the first service provider in Singapore to successfully deploy and commercialize a wireless broadband service using the WBA spectrum (or commonly known as WIMAX). With strong support from its major shareholder, Creative Technology Ltd, a worldwide leader in digital entertainment products and portable media players, QMax is poised to be one of a new breed of broadband infrastructure and technology companies offering consumers a chance to wirelessly access digital media for communication, entertainment and learning at high speed.
Where Next?
It’s been 7 months since Wireless@SG was launched. So far, according to IDA, 2000+ hotspots have been deployed and more than 400,000 subscribers signed up. By the end of this year, barring any unforseen circumstances, we will see the remaining 3000 hotpots up and humming.
I for one have enjoyed the convenience of being able to pull out my notebook, powering up the wireless card and checking my emails practically anywhere in town. Despite the rather slow speed, it has made my work and life digitally convenient. Though Wireless@SG is supposed to be freely available at 512kbps, realities are that download speeds are frequently 256kbps or less. Number of concurrent users, distance from the Access Point, backhaul bandwidth to the internet node are all natural throttlers of bandwidth speed.
One wonders what happens when more people sign up for the service, and get into the habit, nay, culture of lugging around their ultra-portables and powering them up whenever they are in a hotzone? Add to that the increasing prevalence of wifi capabilities in Handphones and it adds up for a potential snail’s race in download speed.
Hopefully the service providers have anticipated this and have made plans for increasing bandwidth backhaul as well as AP density in the hotzones. Otherwise, we could be sitting in a cafe in a hotspot, staring at the screen taking minutes to download a small Youtube video.
Of course we have the option to sign up for Premium plans with its 1Mbps speed but since by the graces of our government, we have been given free access for 3 years, why splurge? BUT that is only my point of view. Premium service would naturally get priority to the limited available bandwidth.
But what about plans to get most if not all Singaporeans connected? I for one would probably not be so inclined to whip out my notebook if I know that i would be subjected to low, frustrating speeds.
