Liquid Intelligent Technologies celebrated World Wi-Fi Day on 20 June by picking up a prestigious award for the Best Wi-Fi Deployment to Connect the Unconnected in a Rural Environment for its Wi-Fi network in Nakuru County, Kenya.
World Wi-Fi Day and its awards are organised by The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) and raise awareness about the widespread absence of broadband infrastructure in both developed and emerging markets.
The awards honour and recognise successful Wi-Fi deployments that are bridging the digital divide and “Connecting the Unconnected.” With just four categories, the awards were hotly contested and attracted entries from around the world including projects from Google, Cisco and the City of New York.
Liquid Intelligent Technologies’s Free Wi-Fi in Nakuru County, Kenya was named as the Best Wi-Fi Deployment to Connect the Unconnected in a Rural Environment category, beating off strong competition from KT for its Giga Island Initiative and Project Isize in Limpopo.
The independent judges evaluated the entries based on the complexity of the project, the challenges overcome and innovation of the solution deployed.
“The WBA is pleased to announce Liquid Intelligent Technologies as the inaugural winner in this category,” said Shrikant Shenwai, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance.”We were greatly impressed with the high calibre of entries we received and would like to thank all the entrants. However, Liquid Intelligent Technologies stood out for its exceptional use of Wi-Fi and its ability to tackle the issue of rural connectivity.”
Ben Roberts, CEO of Liquid Intelligent Technologies Kenya, said “Thank you to the WBA for this award. We are glad that the hard work of both ourselves and the Office of the President of The Republic of Kenya have been recognised at these highly competitive global awards.”
The Nakuru Wi-Fi project was the first of its kind in Kenya, and saw Nakuru join Kigali in Rwanda and Tshwane in South Africa as the first major urban centres in Africa to enjoy access to free public Wi-Fi.
