EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
CableCom pride themselves on delivering fast, reliable Wi-Fi to all their customers. But what you may not be aware of is the dedicated Wi-Fi specialist team that support their customers and help them achieve the best possible service for their end-users.
Last year, CableCom offered the services of their Wi-Fi team free of charge to several non-customer universities. The aim was to demonstrate how the universities could benefit from a free wireless site survey and subsequent report on their halls of residence in order to better understand their Wi-Fi and troubleshoot existing issues.
Dean Hancock and the wireless team at CableCom used Ekahau Site Survey to conduct the survey and generate easily understandable client-facing reports.
CableCom Networking is the market leader in managed Internet services for high density accommodation throughout the UK, serving the student, keyworker and residential markets.
“We use Ekahau Site Survey every day, from pre-sales, through to the design and ultimately the validation of the service. The software has come a long way from when we started using it. Ekahau have one of the best user feedback loops that I am aware of.”
Dean Hancock, Wireless Team Leader at CableCom
CHALLENGES
CableCom boasts over 20 years’ experience and has built a highly successful business, installing internet services into student accommodation across the UK. During this time they have amassed a large amount of knowledge and wanted a way to share this with the industry. In order to do this they decided to offer the services of their Wi-Fi team to several universities who were not customers at the time, in the form of a free wireless site survey and report in accommodation blocks that had a Wi-Fi problem.
“Student accommodation has lots of design challenges and as experts in our field we thought it would be really nice if we could offer a free wireless survey and report to universities that were experiencing issues.”
As Dean and his team were going to be delivering the surveys and reports free of charge they needed to be able to produce them quickly and efficiently.
THE SOLUTION
CableCom have been using Ekahau Site Survey since 2013 and use it to deliver their Wi-Fi consultancy services, so naturally it was going to be critical to the success of the campaign.
“I don’t think this project would have been possible without Ekahau, we certainly couldn’t have done it free of charge. It doesn’t do all the work for you but it makes the whole surveying process so much easier.”
Once an accommodation block was selected for investigation, Dean’s team conducted a survey of each bedroom in the building using Ekahau Site Survey and dual spectrum analysers. This meant they could conduct an active, passive, and RF survey of both the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies in a single pass.
Back in the office, the team then analysed the survey data before using the Ekahau reporting tools to export the heatmaps and annotations into a report and a PowerPoint presentation. They then used these to present their findings back to the client during a feedback meeting.
“I wanted to make sure that the report would include a list of recommendations that the client could implement straight away. So we split out factors that were within their control such as AP placement and channel assignments, and then noted things like rogue APs and interferers separately.”
OUTCOME
CableCom had a great response from the campaign and the universities really appreciated the findings they were presented with.
“We had a great uptake and found that many of the issues we uncovered were related to ageing networks, which is something we actually see quite regularly. The best thing is actually being able to show the Ekahau heatmaps and the data to the customer, they can see exactly what we are talking about.”
The success of the campaign means CableCom have extended the roll out period through to 2018 and are still presenting useful results to the universities who took part.
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