Case study: BT Openzone puts in a stellar performance - January 2005  

As a leading tennis tournament, and the precursor to Wimbledon, the Stella Artois Championships are a major attraction for top players and spectators alike. Yet to ensure the level of publicity it needs to remain one of the UK’s most successful sponsored sporting events, the tournament must continue to upgrade the communications it offers to the media, the players, sponsors
and the general public. BT Openzone, which claims around 50% of the public WiFi market in the UK, stepped in to assist by providing the tournament with a wireless solution.

In 2004, the issue of communications services loomed larger than usual for Stella Artois’ organisers. Other events – including grand slams like the Australian Open – had started to offer wireless services to the media, and the Stella Artois Championships understood the importance of offering similar leading-edge capabilities. The Euro 2004 soccer championships were being held at the same time as the tennis tournament, so it became even more vital to provide state-of-the-art facilities that would attract the media in the face of such rivalry.
Tim Hunt, the Stella Artois Championships’ event director, explains: “Media exposure is very important to us. We were aware of WiFi being made available at some of the other tournaments, and we didn’t want to fall behind in the services we offered. We also wanted to maximise our coverage during Euro 2004 and a wireless broadband service seemed the obvious way in which to do this.”
Jed Leicester is an experienced sports photographer who, as a freelance, sells his work to sports agencies, news organisations such as Reuters, and national newspapers like The Guardian. Most of the venues he works in are not yet equipped with wireless, so he usually relies on his mobile telephone to obtain an internet connection and transmit image files. Speed is of the essence: if his images arrive late, his clients will simply use another photographer’s work.
Unfortunately, connections such as GPRS (general packet radio service) via mobile telephones are neither fast enough nor reliable enough to give Leicester true peace of mind. “There is always a certain amount of angst involved in waiting to see if you will get a connection on your mobile, then waiting three to five minutes for each image to transmit,” he confirms.

Solution

The organisers of the Stella Artois Championships talked to BT about the possibility of installing a wireless service in the media centre at The Queen’s Club. When BT learned about the variety of potential users of such a service – ranging from the media, the players themselves and the umpires to the sponsors and their corporate guests – it recommended that the entire venue be lit up with BT Openzone broadband wireless internet service.
The resulting solution provided a wireless internet connection at 11Mbps for anyone at the tournament using a wireless-enabled laptop or PDA. Ten wireless access points were located internally and externally throughout The Queen’s Club connecting users to the BT Openzone portal and, from there, onto their personal internet service. It allowed users to send and receive e-mails, upload or download images, browse the internet, or access their corporate networks remotely.
The access points were cabled to a central hub – in this case a router in the main club house – with additional IP switches where long distances were involved. The tournament’s usual ISDN and dial-up internet access was replaced by a high-speed 100Mbps ‘back haul’ connection provided by BT Openzone. Traffic was transported to the BT Openzone portal using VPN (virtual private network) technology based on an encrypted IPSec tunnel to ensure complete security.
BT needed to be flexible during implementation because of the extensive changes that are made to Queen’s in order to stage the championships. Steve Thompson, who was responsible for installing and maintaining the BT Openzone service, explains: “The precise technical requirements were not straightforward so it was difficult to define the exact set-up in advance. For example, there was a huge amount of equipment in the hospitality centre – we had to see this in situ in order to plan the wireless topology around it.”
Extensive publicity before the start of the 2004 Stella Artois Championships ensured that both the media and potential spectators were aware of the BT Openzone service before they arrived. The BT Openzone events team were available to help the media, players and sponsors with any questions or problems, and BT Openzone information pods were set up in the public areas to advise spectators who wished to use the service during their visit.

Results

There had been known problems with using WiFi services at other non-UK tennis tournaments, and it was therefore very important to the success of the Stella Artois Championships that the BT Openzone solution performed well at all times. In fact, BT Openzone exceeded all expectations. Take-up of the service among the media was very high, with 80% of journalists and photographers who attended the event using it.
There were frequently as many as 60 journalists using it at any one time, with no decrease in performance and no downtime or technical problems. At the end of one game involving British player Tim Henman, it was estimated that one Gigabyte of data was being uploaded simultaneously – with no noticeable dip in the wireless network’s performance.
The tournament organisers were delighted with the outcome. “It is clearly an advantage to us, in a competitive environment, if we can provide better facilities for the media and an enhanced offering to the players and sponsors,” Hunt observes. “The BT Openzone service was incredibly fast, reliable and trouble free. It was very popular with everyone. We are very pleased with the feedback we have received.”
Other users outside the media centre included ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) members as well as medical and administrative staff, and sponsors and their guests. Furthermore, powerful proof of the versatility of BT Openzone was provided by the umpires, who used the wireless network to transmit match results to the scoring room where they were uploaded to the
internet for wider distribution.

Chris Clark

Opportunities

Its success at the 2004 Stella Artois Championships highlights the many opportunities afforded by WiFi. The model could just as easily be applied to much larger, multi-venue events such as major soccer tournaments or, indeed, the Olympics. BT Openzone is already installed at Twickenham – the home of English rugby - and was used successfully during 2004 at the British Formula One Grand Prix, the World Rally Championships in Wales and the British Open Golf Championships.
“We are witnessing increasing roll-out in WiFi networks generally,” says Chris Clark, chief executive officer of BT Wireless Broadband. “Sports arenas in particular are clambering to build permanent networks and the first driver for that growth has been servicing the media.”
Clark sees four major factors that have influenced WiFi growth over the previous 12 months: “Firstly, WiFi-enabled devices have become more prevalent meaning more people have devices that can access services. Secondly, the number of areas where WiFi can be used has also grown substantially – there were in the region of 1,000 venues at the beginning of 2004 where you could use BT Openzone in the UK, whereas now there are around 7,500. Thirdly, in terms of actual price points, WiFi is much more affordable and easier to buy, and finally, general awareness is rising significantly. People still don’t necessarily know what ‘WiFi’ means, but there are more ABC market individuals using it.”
Turning back to sport, how would a rights owner monetise the technology? “We have a revenue share with Twickenham for example,” says Clark, “but as opportunities evolve and become more sophisticated, financial models will change. Increasingly, other applications will be built on existing WiFi infrastructure and the tarriffing models will have to change significantly. You could get a position where a corporate sponsor would offer WiFi as a free service or you might get cases where the venue itself could cover the charges of accessing the system. We’ll probably reach the stage that with one WiFi box, you’ll be able to charge different people in different fashions.” Certainly, growth and flexibility seem to be firmly part of the WiFi future.

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