The deal with Midland represents a major move by hotels around the world to leverage Wi-Fi as a more strategic asset -- migrating Wi-Fi from a technology of convenience to a ubiquitous utility. In the last 90 days, over 100 hotels have standardized on the Ruckus ZoneFlex Smart WLAN system because of its ability to provide a much more economic and feature-rich wireless environment that does not require elaborate re-wiring or cumbersome deployment.

"Today's economic environment is driving companies like ours toward Wi-Fi solutions that are much more economically attractive while still providing robust features that typically come with higher end, more complex systems," said Cecilia Arnold, VP of Hotel Operations for Midland Hotel Corporation. "Good Wi-Fi has never been more important for hotels but conventional wireless LAN systems have typically been too complex, disruptive and costly to deploy in such as large fashion."

Midland selected One Media Wireless, one of the premiere technology integrators within the hotel industry, to install and maintain the Smart Wireless LAN infrastructure. Having installed advanced Wi-Fi systems in hotels around the country, One Media Wireless is providing systems integration, call center services as well as Wi-Fi support for Midland.

"The downturn in the economy doesn't at all change our customers' need for better Wi-Fi," said Rob Mustarde, VP of Worldwide Sales at Ruckus Wireless. "Value for money is the new mantra across nearly every vertical when it comes to wireless LANs. Ruckus is one of the few vendors that clearly benefits from these macro-economic conditions because our systems deliver the same functionality at a fraction of the capital and operational costs."

Midland is initially deploying Ruckus ZoneFlex Smart Meshing WLAN systems to provide Wi-Fi access for guests, visitors and staff inside and outside its multi-story hotels in Dedham, Marlborough and Peabody properties. Part of a massive renovation of its properties, Midland is investing in state-of-the-art Wi-Fi technology, patented by Ruckus Wireless, provides a more reliable Wi-Fi connection, extended signal range and consistent performance.

"This is what our customers are demanding," said Arnold. "More and more guests are visiting our hotels with Wi-Fi enabled devices of every kind. When they are able to consistently connect at high-speeds anywhere on the property, their overall satisfaction greatly increases. This is crucial to attracting and retaining customers."

Midland is providing free Wi-Fi access in all its guest rooms as well as in corporate meeting spaces, restaurants and outdoor pool and patio areas. The Ruckus ZoneFlex system is also being used to support administrative services and ultimately emerging applications such as voice over IP and wireless point of sale. Previously Midland has provided Wi-Fi only in the lobby areas and found the experience to be subpar for users who experienced dropped connections, poor coverage and erratic performance.

Arnold noted that Midland's selection of Ruckus was based on four essential criteria: 1) the ability to provide better coverage with fewer access points, 2) eliminating the need to run Ethernet cabling to connect all the access points, 3) simple to use configuration and deployment and 4) dramatically lower capital and operational cost. The Holiday Inns being equipped with Wi-Fi include the eight-floor, 200-room Dedham property, the four-floor, 173-room Marlborough property and the four-floor, 184-room Peabody property.

The Ruckus ZoneFlex Smart WLAN installation allows Midland to connect ZoneFlex access points as root APs where existing Ethernet drops are available and to deploy Smart Mesh APs without Ethernet cables where Ethernet can not be cabled or where costs prohibit cabling. And because each Ruckus ZoneFlex integrates a high-gain directional antenna system, Midland only needs to deploy access points on every other floor.

"This is a much more efficient model for us and one that delivers better coverage and performance at a lower total cost of ownership," said Arnold. "We could only find one vendor with commercial-grade products able to deliver such an architecture with such as compelling price/performance ratio."  

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