UniFi Provides Wi-Fi to Outdoor Music Festival

UniFi Provides Wi-Fi to Outdoor Music Festival

UniFi Provides Wi-Fi to Outdoor Music Festival

The Hangout Music Festival is an annual outdoor music festival

that began in 2010. Held in Gulf Shores, Alabama, USA, it is a

widely popular event sponsored by MTV. The three-day festival

features some of the world’s most popular musical acts and

attracts about 40,000 people every year.

JMF Solutions is a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP)

and wireless solution provider in the Broadband Wireless

Access (BWA) market. Headquartered in Daphne, Alabama,

JMF delivers Internet and Voice over Internet Protocol

(VoIP) services under the brand name, WaveFly, to business

customers across the southeastern United States, at sites that

vary in size from a small office up to a city’s entire infrastructure

CHALLENGES

The Hangout Music Festival required reliable, high-speed Wi-Fi

for festival personnel in a sprawling venue. The Wi-Fi network

had to support over 2,000 devices of 70 different groups,

including bands, production crews, producers, vendors, and

sponsors. Most groups arrived on a single day and immediately

wanted Internet and VoIP services. In many cases, a trailer

would be put in place, power was connected, and broadband

services started within an hour.

The primary technical challenge was RF noise from the

audience and festival systems. From a generator-equipped golf

cart, JMF repeatedly ran the airView™ Spectrum Analyzer using

airMAX™ Bullet™M radios at different sites to analyze frequencies

and select the proper channels and power levels for all devices.

UBIQUITI PRODUCT SOLUTION

JMF had less than a week to set up. Because UniFi is easy to

deploy, the six-member team had the network up and running

in two days.

“The whole process was turn-key. It was a great experience

for my team... being able to set up that many access points

in just a couple of days.”