PR releases

The Royal Festival Hall becomes one of the UK’s largest publicly accessible wireless hotspots.

The South Bank Centre and The Cloud, the leading wireless broadband network operator, today announced the launch of one of the UK’s largest publicly accessible wireless hotspots at The Royal Festival Hall (RFH), part of a 27 acre site extending from Jubilee Gardens to Waterloo Bridge.

With 2.5 million visitors annually, the RFH is one of London's most inviting venues hosting concerts by the world's finest orchestras, and rock, jazz, dance and world music events. The WiFi service is available both to concert-goers and other visitors to the venue, including students, tourists and people working in the vicinity for whom it is a popular meeting point and hub on the South Bank.  In addition, nearly 15,000 local residents will also be able to benefit from the South Bank Centre's WiFi services.

Owen Pringle, Head of Media Services at the South Bank Centre, said: “An increasing number of our visitors now have laptops and other wirelessly enabled devices such as PDAs and mobile phones.  By providing them with a way to access the Internet while they are at the Centre we are helping them to get the most out of their visit.  The Cloud was an obvious choice for us to partner with as it has the UK’s largest WiFi network along with proven expertise in deploying WiFi at several other large public sites such as the British Library.”

Zach Leonard, Chief Operating Officer, The Cloud, said: “The Royal Festival Hall is a very exciting site deployment for The Cloud and the third one in the arts arena after the National Film Theatre and Glyndebourne Opera. Sandwiched between the City and the West End and in close proximity to Waterloo station and Eurostar terminal, it is a key South Bank hub.  As a reliable WiFi hotspot location, the RFH will become an even more attractive location for people to meet both for business and pleasure.”

To begin with, a WiFi hotzone has been deployed in the foyer spaces on Levels 2 and 3 in the RFH. As part of the transformation of the South Bank Centre due to be completed by 2007, the aim is to provide seamless WiFi access across the entire 27 acre site. This will greatly benefit customers be they students, business professionals or tourists giving them a truly flexible option of remote working.

The WiFi access points deployed at the Royal Festival Hall are Orinoco AP-4000s from Proxim, a global leader in wireless networking equipment for WiFi and broadband wireless networks. The Orinoco AP-4000 is an enterprise-class, tri-mode access point providing rigorous security and scalability - ideal for deployment in demanding environments such as the Royal Festival Hall.

The wireless Internet service in the Royal Festival Hall is available to visitors with WiFi-enabled devices, who can either connect using The Cloud's Pay-As-You-Go service, charged at £4.50 per hour, or pre-purchase larger blocks of time online through http://www.thecloud.net/

More info from www.rfh.org.uk/wifi

Background:

1) The South Bank Centre (SBC) each year presents nearly 1,000 paid performances of music, dance, literature and other events and more than 300 free foyer events; four major art exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery as well as National Touring Exhibitions in more than 100 venues around the country.  It attracts more than 3 million visitors.  SBC delivers this programme through the Royal Festival Hall and Hayward Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, set in a site extending from Waterloo Bridge to County Hall, which also includes Hungerford car park and Jubilee Gardens.

2) The Cloud offers sophisticated national wireless LAN coverage in almost 5,200 hotspot locations throughout the UK. The Cloud’s infrastructure is a multi-service provider platform, which allows providers such as ISPs, mobile operators and cable companies to offer a fully branded wireless LAN experience to their customers. With The Cloud, site owners maximise their revenue potential by supporting all major service providers at their location and customers enjoy the best possible experience and maximum ease of use. The company is opening more than 100 new locations each week. Launched in mid 2003, The Cloud actively partners with O2, BT, Ericsson and Intel among others to facilitate the growth of wireless broadband services across Europe. The Cloud’s investors include 3i and Accel Partners, Europe.