Overview
Upgrading AAMI Park’s network
AAMI Park opened in 2010. Melbourne’s only dedicated rectangular stadium, AAMI Park is one of the country’s leading venues for football, rugby union and rugby league. AAMI Park also plays host to several special events and major concerts each year. The venue can welcome up to 32,000 guests for concerts and has hosted the likes of Elton John, Foo Fighters, and Robbie Williams.
As part of its preparations for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, AAMI Park needed to upgrade its wireless infrastructure to meet FIFA specifications, with a focus on high-performance Wi-Fi for staff, media, corporate attendees, and athletes. The build achieved a unified platform on a tight timeline with fast changing requirements, elevating its network for all future events and experiences.
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0wireless access points and 14 access switches
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0weeks from design to finished rollout
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0high-performance stadium-wide Cisco network
Challenge
Readying networks for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup
AAMI Park is one of Australia’s premier sports venues, a 30,000-seat rectangular arena within the Melbourne & Olympic Parks precinct. As host to six games in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, the stadium needed to meet new minimum standards for its wireless networking coverage and performance and took the requirements as an opportunity to set new foundations for the future of the venue.
The network upgrades were primarily focused on the needs of the hundreds of staff and visitors who would be working on site during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, with an expectation of reliable high-speed access throughout the venue. Event administrators, athletes, media, corporate attendees, and general staff needed Wi-Fi connectivity in areas that had little to no wireless access.
Melbourne and Olympic Parks Trust, responsible for the management of AAMI Park, held a competitive tender process to find the right partner to design and build the new wireless infrastructure. Telstra Purple won the bid by demonstrating it had extensive experience working in stadium environments and solving the unique challenges they can present.
While the venue was chosen two years before the event, the FIFA overlay document with exact technical specifications required a lengthy process of discussion and finalisation that compressed the time available to execute on the plan. This added to the challenge, requiring a fast and flexible execution strategy to meet a tight deadline in the midst of ongoing events and refurbishment projects ahead of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
We were relying on a lot of flexibility from our partners. Being comfortable when things didn’t go to plan, or to have short notice on final requirements or changes. Telstra was always on board to be as flexible as we needed to get the job done.
Kate Alexander
Head of Major Events, Melbourne & Olympic Parks.
Solution
Fast, flexible approach to design and installation
The AAMI Park team worked closely with Telstra to finalise the network infrastructure plan and secure all required hardware. The solution design examined all connectivity needs across the venue, with the focus on back of house, corporate areas and on field connectivity.
With the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup operating as a digital-only ticketed event, public facing requirements ensured external concourse and gate areas of AAMI Park had appropriate Wi-Fi to guarantee digital ticketing processes would function smoothly. This was particularly important for overseas visitors who may have been reliant on Wi-Fi during their visit.
“Telstra helped us to consider the volumes of people that would be in various areas and how much connectivity would be required to serve their needs across every key zone of the venue... we required hundreds of wireless access points to meet the needs of our final design,” says Simon Blakeney, Venue Manager, AAMI Park.
While examining the existing network infrastructure, Telstra found there were multiple systems running throughout the stadium. As part of approaching the project as a new foundation for AAMI Park, a new unified approach was adopted to bring everything into one seamless network platform.
AAMI Park wanted to ensure its new network infrastructure was aligned with its preferred hardware partner, Cisco, but at the time there were significant chip shortages and backlogs on hardware. Through Telstra’s close partnership with Cisco, the hardware was able to be expedited to ensure everything needed was in place ahead of venue handover to FIFA.
The stadium was also undergoing a wider range of upgrades as part of 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup preparations. New lighting, video screens, corporate and media facilities, cosmetic upgrades throughout the premises, and laying a new pitch surface were all concurrently in progress. With over 50 partners and contractors all on site while other sport season matches and public events continued, it was an incredibly dynamic time at the venue.
We were relying on a lot of flexibility from our partners. Being comfortable when things didn’t go to plan, or to have short notice on final requirements or changes. Telstra was always on board to be as flexible as we needed to get the job done.
Kate Alexander
Head of Major Events, Melbourne & Olympic Parks.
Impact
Rapid execution delivers foundations for today and tomorrow
With final plans confirmed in May 2023 ahead of a July tournament kick-off, AAMI Park and Telstra achieved the network infrastructure rollout in 10 weeks. Even as some hardware was commissioned just two days prior to handover of the stadium to FIFA, Telstra ensured everything was installed and operating to requirements to meet the deadline.
Telstra helped us to deliver a detailed design process that saw a lot of great collaboration and forward planning prepare us for when we could start the hardware installation. We knew exactly what we needed to do and what we had to do for testing, so we had great confidence we would deliver within the timeframes.
Iain Phin
Head of Technology, Melbourne & Olympic Parks
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