Jisc has joined the Wireless Broadband Alliance, a Wi-Fi industry group focused on global collaboration and interoperability across the sector. The WBA’s objectives – to define best practice, foster adoption of new technologies, and promote thought-leadership – align closely with our own, and we believe present opportunities that will benefit our education and research members.
We’re joining a growing community of operators and technology providers, and will be participating across their wide program of activities. Of particular interest is the OpenRoaming initiative, a global roaming federation that provides users with seamless access to Wi-Fi from any participating site, and aims to set globally agreed standards and policies for guest/public connectivity. The service follows a similar model to that established by eduroam, and we’re currently looking at how we might give eduroam users access to OpenRoaming venues.
Above all, we want education and research perspectives to be represented in these important industry discussions. Our members have often been early and innovative adopters of new mobile technologies, and we’ll work to ensure that any Wi-Fi solutions developed take in to account their requirements.
We will also engage with other WBA participants to identify partners for future innovation in the education and research space.
Our Janet CTO, Jeremy Sharp, talks more about our priorities in a recent interview with the WBA: https://wballiance.com/an-interview-with-wba-member-jisc/.