Hamilton is New Zealand’s largest inland city with a population of over 100,000 people. The city has seen spectacular growth over the last few decades and many developments have taken place to enhance the region. While agriculture has traditionally been the dominant industry, other sectors such as manufacturing and retail are catching up and providing more diverse business opportunities.

Hamilton City Council is a local government body and responsible for managing community facilities and services.

In mid 2001, Hamilton City Council tendered a proposal for a total telecommunication network upgrade across their infrastructure for voice, data, cellular, carrier, mobile radio, Internet and paging systems. This upgrade was to encompass the entire range of Council facilities, from public libraries to sports stadiums.

IBM Global Services (then Logical CSI) was awarded the task of designing and integrating a new voice/data network solution. One of the first phases was to provide communications infrastructure and services to the new Waikato Stadium (formerly Rugby Park). The opening date was to be 1st March 2002 - a tight deadline to work to. One of the challenges IBM faced was to provide a multiservice network infrastructure capable of supporting not only telephony and data, but also modems, faxes and EFTPOS.

There were also multiple tenants on the site who required access to their own independent networks while retaining the ability to communicate effectively with other stadium tenants and users.

Looking to the future
IBM drew on its extensive knowledge and experience in project management, network design and integration to build a solution for Hamilton City Council.

To overcome a variety of design challenges, IBM deployed several leading edge Cisco technologies. With dual Cisco Call Managers installed at the Council’s Central City core, service was extended 2km to the new stadium using Gigabit Ethernet over single mode fibre.

At the stadium, Cisco 2900 and 3500 switches were used to deliver 10/100 Ethernet ports to serve data terminals and IP telephones in locations on each level of the five level complex. VG248 analog gateways were installed to provide analog telephony, as well as 33kb modem and EFTPOS dialup facilities. Long-range Ethernet (LRE) switches and LRE CPE were also deployed to provide Ethernet connectivity to locations several hundred metres from the new stand across the park in the old grandstand building.

While analog infrastructure has been provided from the outset, many stadium users are already beginning to take advantage of the much higher speed direct Ethernet connectivity available to operate services normally provided over analog infrastructure. Wireless LAN capability is also being considered to facilitate and simplify network access for users of the stadium’s infrastructure, like journalists and photographers.

For more information contact
IBM
www.ibm.com

July 2005