Continuing the series of World Fairs inspired by the famous Great Exhibition held in London 1851, Italy hosted EXPO Milan. With hundreds of exhibitors representing 145 nations the event was attended by more than 21 million visitors.
This was the second time Milan had stepped up to host a World Fair. But back in 1906 people didn't have smartphones and Wi-Fi didn't exist yet. Being "connected" meant something very different than it does today. Today, being "connected" means having uninterrupted access to the Internet wherever you are - on vacation, at an Expo, everywhere. EXPO Milan organizers understood this and realized that a good Wi-Fi experience would be an important factor in overall visitor satisfaction.
The new venue for EXPO Milan which featured 5 thematic areas and over 70 pavilions covered a massive area of 1.1 million square meters. Telecom Italia was commissioned to provide the wired and wireless infrastructure. Planning for the network began in 2014 while many of the structures and art exhibits were still in the design phase. It was hard to predict where most of the visitors would congregate. The network design also needed to consider how the buildings and exposition areas might be used in future, after the six month EXPO finally ended.
The biggest design challenge was the large open spaces, as well as in the many modern buildings with unique architectural designs. But since much of the construction had not started, it was impossible to conduct an accurate site survey before planning access point placement.
For the hundreds of exhibitors, EXPO Milan would be home for the next six months, therefore, they needed a highly functional wired and wireless network. It would need to deliver reliable Internet access, secure Point of Sale, voice over IP, streaming video and more.
With predicted attendance anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000 visitors per hour, Telecom Italia faced many of the same issues experienced by universities - self service on-boarding, massive surges of users entering and exiting exhibits, and constant Wi-Fi roaming. They had to deliver ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage over a vast area, while also supporting high density around the pavilions, yet they were flying blind as to what the RF environmental conditions would ultimately be like once everything was built.
The eyes of the world would be on this prestigious event, so the guest experience had to be excellent. For these reasons Telecom Italia and their access point vendor enlisted the assistance of 7SIGNAL, The Wi-Fi P erformance Company.
BENEFITS REALIZED FROM THE 7SIGNAL WI-Fl PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
� Continuously managed Wi-Fi experience for 10 to 40,000 hourly visitor for 6 months.
� Expo organizers gained confidence with real-time visibility into the health of the Wi-Fi network.
� Gained the performance visibility to intelligently and continually optimize the network on behalf of EXPO visitors seeking a fully-immersive, connected experience.