Together with its expert knowledge of developed and emerging technology and its excellent track record of contributing to connectivity across Africa, Q-KON has strengthened its carrier-class WiFi service capability with the announcement of strategic partnerships.
Q-KON, a Tier 1 provider of integrated access services and turn-key telecommunication solutions in Africa, has announced partnerships with Ruckus Wireless and Aptilo Networks – two recognised leaders in their sectors. T
he partners are aligned with Q-KON’s vision and mission to reinforce its standing in- and delivery to the ‘golden triangle’, or the place where emerging technology, markets and sustainable business meets.
“We have the RF engineering and system integration expertise which will be key to ensure successful end-to-end implementations within the evolving WiFi services market,” says Dr Dawie de Wet, CEO, Q-KON.
“There is much expectation about carrier-class WiFi services and how WiFi will change the data connectivity landscape of the future, and we agree with all of this.
“What is also true is that we know from experience that carrier-class ‘anything’ doesn’t come without carrier-class engineering and that WiFi deployments will need to evolve from the current knock-and-drop installation to seriously designed end-to-end engineered services in order to meet the expectations. This for us spells “opportunity” in a big way and we looking forward to once again lead the way in the next chapter of WiFi industry,” Dr de Wet continues.
He explains that Q-KON’s value proposition is to empower partners, customers and service providers to take WiFi from ‘consumer grade’ to ‘carrier-class’ defined in the specific context of each market landscape.
The partnerships with Ruckus Wireless and Aptilo Networks will allow Q-KON to endorse the advantages of technologies and offer the peace-of-mind required by customers that deploy new technologies to service new markets.
Leveraging off its 25 years of experience in servicing Africa and opening new market sectors, Q-KON will utilise its partnerships to provide end-to-end service solutions for large-scale WiFi deployments for local government, residential area networks, enterprise campus networks and public carrier networks.
“For the retail sector we can unlock the marketing benefits of location-based services, for the educational sector we can make “free WiFi for all” a reality within the constraints of funding and business requirements, and for the public operators we can deliver the promise of WiFi offloading,” Dr de Wet adds.
Reflecting on the Company’s achievements to date – including developing the very first 9600bps data radio and installing the first ever long-distance 2.4GHz wireless link back in 1996 – Dr de Wet believes Q-KON has established a powerful position in the market from which to deliver service and make a significant difference to Africa’s connectivity position, particularly in terms of WiFi connectivity.
