Case Study: Afone achieves seamless, citywide free Wi‑Fi across 20 major French cities with RUCKUS Networks

Ruckus Wireless Wi-Fi Creates Seamless Smart Cities

The Afone Group, founded in 1997 and based in Angers, is a telecoms and electronic payments operator serving over 600,000 clients. Confronted by rapidly growing mobile data use after the arrival of 4G, Afone needed to provide free broadband in high-density urban areas, act as an Internet access provider, increase network density and ensure seamless, user‑friendly mobility while sustaining a viable free‑access model.

To meet this, Afone partnered with Ruckus Wireless to launch the WifiLib project and deployed 4,000 ZoneFlex R500 access points across the hyper-centres of France’s top 20 cities. The network delivered seamless roaming (sign up once for automatic access in other cities), strong signal range and very low failure rates, while enabling geo-targeted services, M2M use cases and new partnership and monetization opportunities.

Afone

Reynald Werquin

Innovation Director