The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) has been working with Cisco Meraki to upgrade the campus Wi-Fi network of a US church.
The upgrade supports Lake Oconee Church adopting WBA OpenRoaming – which simplifies how the congregation and its guests securely connect to parish networks and one another.
Lake Oconee Church has served as a hub for the Greensboro, Georgia, community since 2013, supporting local businesses, social enterprises, not-for-profits, education and more.
In 2021, the church deployed a cloud-managed network powered by Cisco Meraki Wi-Fi 6 access points.
In less than two years, Lake Oconee Church has tripled the amount of space its network supports, allowing parishioners and guests to stay seamlessly connected, providing instant access to information, such as scriptures and song lyrics, and enabling remote participation in services. With Wi-Fi 6, church members and guests can enjoy these benefits with six times faster upload speeds and four times faster download speeds, when compared with legacy Wi-Fi networks.
To further enhance the community experience, Lake Oconee Church has newly deployed WBA OpenRoaming, which enables parishioners and guests to log in only once and then have their smartphone, tablet or laptop automatically connect every time they return.
Available at over one million hotspots worldwide, WBA OpenRoaming has become the global standard that Wi-Fi network owners, service providers and others are adding. It eliminates the need for users to constantly re-register or re-enter log-in credentials – all while maintaining enterprise-grade security.
Tiago Rodrigues, WBA CEO, said: “Lake Oconee Church is the latest example of how WBA OpenRoaming deftly eliminates one of the biggest barriers to staying connected: the hassle of constantly remembering and submitting log-in credentials. OpenRoaming’s convenience frees Lake Oconee parishioners and guests to enjoy the speed of Wi-Fi 6 instead of continually finding the network and then logging back in.”
Morgan Herselman, Lake Oconee Church Director of Ministry Services, said: “WBA OpenRoaming provides the Lake Oconee community with convenient, seamless and secure Wi-Fi connectivity throughout our campus. The area our networking environment covers has tripled in size over the past few months, which highlights how important Wi-Fi has become not only to traditional worship, but also the education, volunteer work and the myriad other activities that our ministry and community engage in every day.”
Matt MacPherson, Wireless CTO, Cisco, said: “With WBA OpenRoaming, organizations such as Lake Oconee Church can seamlessly and securely onboard guests to their wireless networks without the need for usernames and passwords. OpenRoaming was developed with privacy first and provides users with trusted and secure onboarding with authentication from hundreds of identity providers they already use. This enables Cisco customers, whether using Meraki or Catalyst networks, to deliver the fastest, most trusted connections possible to get their users connected and engaged.”
