Maharashtra Govt chose Fortinet to deliver the wireless solution for MumbaiWiFi

MUMBAI, INDIA: Earlier this year, just before the BMC polls, the Government of Maharashtra launched the first phase of its ambitious MumbaiWiFi project to cover all major areas in the city with public WiFi hotspots.

Besides, ensuring all government services are available online to its citizen, the Wi-Fi network was also planned to be used for smart parking and smart transportation, to provide real-time updates on the routes and available capacity of the various modes of public transport in the city.

Maharashtra Information Technology Corporation (MITC) chose Fortinet technology to provide Wi-fi connectivity in 500 hotspots at prominent public places in Mumbai city and suburbs including the offices of Mumbai Police Commissioner, Vidhan Bhavan, KalaNagar in Bandra and Bombay High Court.

Fortinet outdoor and indoor Access Points have been deployed at 500 locations across Mumbai city and were fully operational in January 2017. In a trial run between 2 to 8 January, 2017, around 23,000 users signed up into MumbaiWiFi network and downloaded more than 2TB (TetraByte) data.

"MumbaiWiFi project plays a crucial role in empowering our citizens digitally. Our goal was to cover all major areas in the city with public WiFi in order to make important government services available online. Because of the hyperconnected nature of our public infrastructure today, an ambitious project like this requied technology that could scale and be flexibile to enable more users, devices, and applications over time,” said Vijay Kumar Gautam, Principal Secretary Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra.

Fortinet ruffled a few leaders in the wireless space to win the deal as the competition failed to meet the very stringent delivery deadlines in this mega project, said the company.

"Fortinet is uniquely able to support this project with our Wireless R&D center at Bangalore lending the required technical expertise. High-availability, speed and density of coverage are all must haves in a public Wi-Fi network and our solutions have demonstrated that they can perform in the most demanding environment without compromise,” said Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, SAARC for Fortinet.

In its first phase of MumbaiWiFi project, the Maharashtra Government has deployed 550 Fortinet OAP832e outdoor Access Points with omnidirectional antennas, 50 AP832i indoor Access Points, two FortiWLC-3000D wireless controllers and FortiWLM-1000D wireless manager to provide safe and secure internet access to the public in Mumbai city.

The Access Points have a unique Wi-Fi channel management architecture called Virtual Cell which simplifies deployment and scaling, and enables a number of compelling quality user experience advantages. These include superior voice mobility due to zero-handoff roaming, and more reliable user connections due to real-time load balancing based on actual traffic.

Two FortiWLC 3000D controllers have been deployed to optimizes traffic across the network to support high density and high performance requirements of this large public network.

A FortiWLM 1000D Wireless Manager is utilized to manage the network infrastructure and to provide additional configuration and performance capabilities.

Securing public communications over Wifi such as personal information, financial transactions, and mobile device data sharing involves much more than simply managing network access control. ­Users want fast WiFi and a smooth experience across wired or wireless networks and typical WiFi solutions cannot satisfactorily address these requirements. Fortinet's Secure Access solution delivers three WLAN deployment options to meet the different WLAN requirements of today's enterprises. In addition to WLAN services, its complete secure access portfolio also provides the most flexible security with end-to-end enforcement enabled by the Fortinet Security Fabric.

"BYOD and the Internet of Things (IoT) are creating new attack vectors that put critical assets within public or private networks at risk. As more users, more devices, and more applications are added to WiFi networks, organizations need secure, enterprise-class WiFi that can deliver a superior experience for all users. Secure access needs to extend consistent security policies to the very edge of the network where most vulnerabilities target. Security cannot happen at the expense of high-availability, speed and density of coverage which are all must-haves in a public WiFi network,” said Maurya.