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McLaren Delivers Wi-Fi at Sydney’s Central Station with Fluide Internet Portal

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McLaren & Virtual Graffiti deliver new free Wi-Fi at Sydney’s Central Station

Sydney, 20 August 2013 – More than 180,000 travellers using Australia’s busiest transport hub, Sydney’s Central Station, now have access to free Wi-Fi following a progressive decision by the NSW Government to install advanced new infrastructure and deliver a more accessible internet experience for commuters.

Sydney Trains wireless engineering team designed and architected the new Wi-Fi Hotspot system. To facilitate the technology installation at Central Station, Transport for NSW appointed leading international technology solutions and services specialists McLaren Technologies (Fluide Internet Portal), and Virtual Graffiti Australia (Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi) to collaborate with Sydney Trains on the project.

McLaren Technologies CEO Matthew White said, “McLaren’s hospitality solutions currently provide internet to hundreds of hotels across Asia Pacific so this has been an exciting opportunity for McLaren to now deliver a public infrastructure project.

“Thousands of commuters now have access to free Wi-Fi thanks to Transport for NSW’s focus on enhancing customer travel experience of intercity and regional train customers using NSW TrainLink services. The Fluide solution at Central Station is very simple to use. After accepting the terms and conditions, users will receive 400MB per day, to work and play online.”

The NSW Government is the latest in a growing list of high traffic public areas around the globe that are turning to smarter, more reliable Wi-Fi for wireless broadband access, offloading data traffic from 3G cellular networks.

The McLaren solution includes a Nomadix gateway and McLaren’s Fluide web portal controlling bandwidth management, access times and all aspects of the user’s internet experience. The Fluide platform also contains a customised, web-based Management and Reporting Platform to provide comprehensive graphical and numerical data analysis to Transport for NSW.

“The solution enables Transport for NSW to easily analyse the number of users accessing the system as well as the average duration and data usage, downloads and uploads experienced,” said Mr White. “They can also track trends for usage at varying periods of the day, which will ultimately assist with ensuring adequate access at peak periods.”

Virtual Graffiti’s Sales Director Jonny Wahlhaus said, “We have been delighted to work with Transport for NSW this project which will potentially change the travelling experience of up to 180,000 customers each day – that is as big an impact as you can wish for from a single Wi-Fi implementation.”

Eleven Ruckus ZoneFlex 7782 outdoor access points (APs) were deployed to provide the higher required levels of capacity and reliability in noisy and crowded radio frequency (RF) environments like railway stations. The outdoor AP combines Ruckus specialised smart sector antenna technology that narrowly focuses Wi-Fi signals within a 30-degree beam width with advanced software capabilities optimising capacity and minimising interference.

“The ZoneFlex 7782-N was chosen for the deployment as it is designed for challenging, high density outdoor deployments, such as Central Station, in mind,” said Mr Wahlhaus.

Central Station is located at the southern end of the Sydney CBD and is the largest railway station in Australia. It services almost all of the lines on the Sydney Trains network, and is the major terminus for interurban and interstate rail services. It is the hub of the Sydney Trains network. As one of Sydney’s most recognisable landmarks, Central is also a popular meeting point for travellers and is also a key interchange point between buses, coaches and trams.