Category: Event WiFi
Hear some thoughts from Director, Richard Hughes on completing one of the biggest projects in Max WiFi’s history!
“I’m leaving Liverpool after the project of a lifetime.
Whilst In Australia, we received the news that #maxwifi had won the contract to deliver the Network and WiFi solutions to #eurovision2023.
Our team were heading to LA to deliver #FriezeLA when I started planning.
Working with ACC’s Chris Jones and BBC’s Technical Producer, James Bonnar the plan slowly came together and this included multiple trips to Liverpool to survey the dark recesses of the ACC to find Fibre runs and cable access to deploy services to every part of the venue.
Then a curve ball, we won the #TurquoiseCarpet event at St George’s Hall produced by Event Design’s Stuart Stalker.
So as the events got closer my team started to arrive on site:
James Pearson – Eurovision2023 Alexander Horne – Eurovision2023 Cameron Bond – Eurovision2023 Alfie Jones – Eurovision2023
Mark Fower – Turquoise Carpet & Eurovision2023
Oli Morrill – Turquoise Carpet & Eurovision2023
200 cores of fibre were installed and spliced to ensure a fully resilient fibre ring throughout the site and broadcast compound.
The fibre, delivered by Rob Fisher and Nathan Woolley gave us full security that services wouldn’t be interrupted in the event of hardware failure or malicious activity.
A fully redundant 10Gb core managed the 4 x 10Gb circuits plus numerous other circuits and a few Starlinks in case the very worst happened.
We created a secure Captive Portal to direct 6000+ devices, servers and cameras to the correct network to ensure client isolation and additional security layers.
The #TurquoiseCarpet ended and the acts had enjoyed their moment in the sunshine of St George’s Square and Holly Johnson had belted out “Welcome to the Pleasure Dome”.
The team de-rigged through the night and headed down to join us at the ACC.
Working with all depts but especially with our new friends at #CuePilot, we ensured all camera positions had the network they required to control the moving cameras around the arena.
Commentary boxes were cabled up, #Eckahau surveys took place most mornings to ensure the WiFi network would stand up to the demands placed upon it by Broadcast and Media.
Then the final!
The anticipated cyber attack, following four years of successful attacks on the event was a large black cloud hanging over us. Unsure of when it would come, we had done everything to mitigate an attack but when you’re hosting an event for a country under attack from Russia, the possibilities are endless.
We were successful and the night was flawless.
We’ve had a blast, learnt a lot and met some great people in a great city.
I’m immensely proud to have led this team and it will remain as my top personal achievement in my working life.
If you have a project be it a small event or the world’s largest single televised event (161 million viewers). please get in touch.
We do make the #netWORK!”
-Richard Hughes
