TiwaNet deploys hotspot @ 3 Lagos’ suburbs

Licensee of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Tiwanet Technologies Limited has completed deployment of hotspots in three suburbs in Lagos State.

Chief executive officer, Tiwanet, Rev. Faith Afolayan made this disclosure at a press meeting in his office at De-Star Shopping Complex, Isheri-Olofin also in Lagos.

He said that the three benefiting suburbs recently covered with hotspots included Alimosho Local Government Area (LGA), Gbagada area and Apapa.

“We deploy hotspot solutions and already have reference points, for instance, in Alimosho LGA, Gbagada area and Apapa, all in Lagos State,” he said.

These suburbs were linked through the deployment of what he depicted as Long range hotspot.

Afolayana also explained that with hotspot deployment which could come in three versions is generically referred to as any public accessible wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), meaning that the public can use a laptop, Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) or Wireless Access Point (WAP)-enabled phone among other wireless mobile devices to connect wirelessly.

“Of the estimated 150 million laptops, 14 million is known to be Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and other emerging Wi-Fi devices sold per year worldwide for the last few years,” he said.

He underscored the fact that hotspots are often found at public places such as train stations, airports, military bases, libraries, hotels, hospitals, eateries, bookstores, campuses to name a few.

According to him, there exist free and commercial hotspot options, stressing that free hotspots operate in two ways, including using an open public network as the easiest way to create a free hotspot.

“All that is needed is a Wi-Fi router, while private users of wireless routers can turn off their encryption, thus opening their connection, intentionally or not, for sharing by anyone in range, which makes access to the router not to be easily controlled,” he declared.

Afolayan further said that closed public networks use a hotspot management system to control the hotspot, which is a software that runs on the router itself or an external computer.

“With this software, operators can authorize only specific users to access the internet, and they often associate the free access to a menu or to a purchase limit,” Afolayan explained.

As said by him, commercial hotpots come in three variants, namely the long range, indoor and mobile.

With long range hotspot, he said, customers could be far from base stations to the length of about 7 kilometres.

“Sometimes, repeater stations may be required, hence such customer require customer premises equipment (CPE),” he said, while the indoor hotspot could be deployed within the premises and could be configured to distribute the signal.

“In this scenerio, laptops and desktop computers that is Wi-Fi enabled can connect to network resources,” he said, noting that this is commonly deployed at residences or office environment.

On the mobile hotspot, Afolayan said is one of the recent developments that could cover a short range starting from 500 metres with capacity for expansion.

“The product is good for camps, campus, schools, estates, to name a few,” he said, assuring that Tiwanet has what it takes to ensure seamless connection of devices at any point in the country.

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