In Paris, JCDecaux’s reach of street furniture, including advertising columns, is providing free, unlimited high-speed Wi-Fi to locals and tourists on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, bringing connectivity to the world’s most famous avenue and its 100 million annual visitors, including 30 million tourists.
Through the installation of a new fibre network, Colt supported JCDecaux on the transformation of its street furniture along the avenue into connected Wi-Fi hubs capable of sustaining up to 10,000 simultaneous connections along the avenue, with an average speed of more than 30Mbps right up to peak bursts of 200Mbps.
Colt had to build and deploy the Champs Elysees Wifi project within a demanding six week deadline ahead of the UEFA Euro 2016 tournament, which started on June 10th, so being even one day late was out of the question. The result has been a huge success, with tourists and local businesses being able to take advantage of high quality, high-speed Wi-Fi connectivity, including support for an extra 2.4 million people who visited Paris for the event.
Marc Merlini, Business Development Director, JCDecaux Link, said JCDecaux plays a key role in urban digital transformation, providing small cells, digital communication, connected sustainable mobility or free Wi-Fi to emerging smart cities.
Our experience has shown us that the combination of fibre connectivity with street furniture will be the backbone of this evolution. Today’s urban population expects increasingly connected digital services from their cities, the delivery of which can be technically complex and involve sensitive circumstances given the heritage of many cities.- Marc Merlini, Business Development Manager, JCDecaux