ASK4 And Edgecore Deploy OpenWiFi For Sheffield Students

Sheffield students living in the city’s Nurtur House complex will benefit from enhanced connectivity delivered by cutting edge OpenWiFi solutions, thanks to a new partnership between Taiwan based Edgecore Networks and locally headquartered ISP Ask4. The new deployment sees 180 Edgecore Wi-Fi’s EAP104 wall-plate OpenWiFi Access Points installed directly within individual student rooms using RJ-45 connections, which will significantly enhance signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to deliver consistent, high-quality Wi-Fi across the site.

Andy Davidson, CTO of ASK4, commenting on the news said: “ASK4 and Edgecore Wi-Fi are turning OpenWiFi dreams into reality, evolving from proof-of-concept to live deployments at multiple sites. This wasn’t just about plugging in some advanced hardware – we partnered with Edgecore Wi-Fi to build the technical, commercial, and support structures needed to make OpenWiFi scalable, future-proof, and robust.”

OpenWiFi, an open-source solution incubated by the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), provides a cost-effective alternative for wireless networking. It includes a cloud SDK, enterprise-grade Access Point (AP) firmware, and POE++ switch firmware—each designed and tested to work seamlessly together. This integration contributes to significantly reducing the total cost of ownership.

Last year, TIP announced that OpenWiFi had surpassed 100,000 deployed APs, a major milestone for the project. While it still has a way to go before competing with industry giants like Cisco, HPE, and CommScope, these deployments highlight the potential of community-driven innovation to deliver enterprise-grade performance and reliability.