Fairwaves and Event Connection provided private GSM coverage during the “Walk of the World”

Fairwaves and Event Connection provided private GSM coverage during the “Walk of the World”, one of the largest festivals in The Netherlands in Aug 2013. We have built a private GSM network that covered the city of Nijmegen for the duration of the whole event. The main objective was to provide a GSM service with 100% service availability that did not depend on incumbent operators.

With over 40,000 people walking and about a million spectators, commercial GSM networks faced a hard time remaining on the air. Key people from security staff, local stages and police were delighted to have a reliable service covering the town, even when the public networks were down. The system provided short number calling for internal calls, which made using the system particularly easy.

The network was deployed in the unlicensed guard band between DECT and the GSM 1800 spectrum. It is opened up for anyone to use for low power GSM applications with transmit power of base stations limited to 200mW and mast heights limited to 10 metres.

The main scenario is to use Network in the box (NITB) approach with one base station which suits well for fast roll-out. In some cases central controller with several base station could be used to make coverage better.