Meru Wi-Fi selected by thousands of schools in UK and Ireland in the past 18 months

ENGLAND, UK: Meru Networks Inc., a leader in Wi-Fi networking, has announced that it has been chosen by more than 2,000 colleges, universities, primary and secondary schools in the UK and Ireland in the past 18 months.

The institutions are deploying Meru Education-grade (MEG) Wi-Fi networks to address sharply rising device densities, ‘always-on' students and faculty, and accompanying increases in network traffic.

Meru, which recently launched its new AP832 access point to support the next-generation 802.11ac standard, has also seen an increase in legacy competitive Wi-Fi technology being ripped out of classrooms, often due to poor network performance or redundant technology, and replaced by Meru solutions.

"Wireless technology in schools has become integral to creating a personalised learning environment," said Mark Howell, area director for UK and Ireland at Meru. "But while this increase in demand for Wi-Fi to support an ever-growing number of devices is good news, it's easy to think that a low cost solution can deliver the performance and scalability required. Mobile technology is only as good as the network supporting it, and as you add more devices, your network needs to be able to grow and deliver the same performance today, tomorrow and in five years' time."

Meru counts more than 2,750 primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities across the UK and Ireland among its customers. These include Essa Academy in Bolton, Longfield Academy, and the Education Network in Northern Ireland, where Meru and partner Capita are delivering Wi-Fi to more than 350,000 teachers and pupils in more than 1,200 schools. West Midlands-based Shelfield Community Academy also recently replaced its entire Cisco network with Meru to support more than 1,000 Android mobile devices. Chiswick School has also replaced Cisco with Meru this year.