With international travel on the rise, airports are key locations for telecommunications carriers to capture roaming and data from business customers.
To strengthen its coverage at the Sydney International Airport, Vodafone Australia selected Kordia Solutions to design an in-building 3G WCDMA wireless network to be shared by multiple telecommunications carriers.
“This is a major project win for Kordia and reflects the strong customer confidence in our Specialised Coverage Solutions, which has expanded its applications from stadiums and shopping centres and now to airports,” said Kordia Solutions’ Managing Director Peter Robson.
“Vodafone acknowledges that this was a tough and large scale in building coverage (IBC) build for Kordia’s Specialised Coverage Solutions team.
Particularly noting that no carrier had ever built a complete IBC at Sydney International Airport,” said Peter Ryan, Vodafone Australia’s General Manager, Network Delivery.
He added that firstly, agreement needed to be reached with all four carriers for the required technologies and consequent detailed design.
Secondly, it needed to be built to a condensed timeframe specifically to meet Vodafone's requirements for the APEC Summit.
And thirdly, the project had enormous security complexity with build only being able to take place 10pm to 6am each night and no existing network service could be impacted.
“Vodafone is delighted that it can now offer at the Sydney International Airport a great and seamless customer experience for our local and international (roaming) travellers and visitors" added Ryan.
As the lead carrier, Vodafone requested Kordia include the new Telstra 850 network to enable the airport system to operate on quad technology; combining both active and passive in-building systems.
Working on the mammoth project and multiple technologies that could frequently interfere with one other didn’t faze Kordia.
Every component of the system had to be tested for inter-modulation which included 200 antennas and approximately 8km of cables including, fibre, co-axial and data.
Kordia presented a clever design using the existing airport backbone infrastructure combined with LGC’s Wireless Fusion active technology and passive technology.
This produced a cost effective yet robust solution capable of combining technologies at 850Mhz, 900Mhz, 1800Mhz, 2100Mhz and satisfied the requirements of all carriers operating off the system.
The Specialised Coverage Solutions team comprising Anthony Farquhar, Lindsay Patience, Mark Graham, Frank Yee, Gary O’Connor, Brad MacLean, Luke Jones, Carol Nigro and Alan Kibblewhite continue to work on the challenging project, with completion of the first practical milestone in late August.
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Anthony Farquhar
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