Overview
The German city of Nidda has around 18,000 inhabitants spread across 18 districts. In order to improve the quality of life in public spaces, Nidda has decided to set up a comprehensive WLAN infrastructure in the city center, thus enabling free access to the Internet.
"Due to the positive references and the reasonable priceperformance ratio, we decided to build a city-wide Wi-Fi infrastructure with the solutions from Cambium Networks. We are thus taking a big step towards the Smart City. " Kerstin Alt, Economic development, City Marketing, Spa & Tourism of the city of Nidda
The Challenge
Nidda applied to the WiFi4EU initiative of the EU Commission. The funding program supports cities and municipalities in Europe in implementing free internet access via hotspots in parks, large squares, public buildings and health centers. When creating the concept, some requirements had to be taken into account, such as monument protection requirements, which only allowed minimal interference with the given infrastructure
In addition, various Internet access points had to be set in order to be able to equip several locations with free WLAN. There were further requirements for the security settings of the network.
The Solution
The city of Nidda chose Cambium Networks, among others due to the positive references
and the reasonable price-performance ratio. Cambium partner Chilinet Solutions GmbH
installed products for indoor and outdoor use, including 19 cnPilot access points and four
ePMP Force radio relay components for two radio links. For easy day-to-day management,
those responsible use the central management tool cnMaestro.
The Results
In about nine months the city of Nidda built up a comprehensive Wi-Fi infrastructure with funds from the WiFi4EU initiative. Whether at the town hall or in the outdoor pool – free Wi-Fi use is now possible at several locations in Nidda. In order to further develop into a modern Smart City, further digital offers are to follow.