MetrôRio stations - Flamengo, Largo do Machado and Catete - of Rio de Janeiro's subway service are now WiFi enabled. The new free WiFi service is provided by Linktel and the stations are equiped with Cisco Aironet 2602-i Access Points and the Cisco 8500 Wireless Controller. In addition, Cisco Prime architecture integrates the solution to Prime LAN Management Solutions (LMS) and Prime Network Control System (NCS) in a single package.
According to Cisco, the infrastructure was deployed in a "star" topology, interconnected with the concessionaire central with Wi-Fi points arranged in mezzanines and the platforms. The MetrôRio Wi-Fi is also employed by commercial establishments within the stations. Linktel has a sales team that provides the service in a shared link to the stores, which then use the wireless Internet for their day-to-day operations.
The concessionaire intends to implement free Wi-Fi in all 36 stations of its two lines by the end of this year.
Ricardo Nunes, director of Marketing and Sales at MetrôRio
It’s important for MetrôRio to provide convenience and services such as free Wi-Fi, to facilitate the users' life, making their experience within the subway system even more positive.
Jonas Trunk, Linktel’s president
Throughout the whole operation time in the three MetrôRio stations, no wireless network failure has been reported, nor communication problems or in users’ authentications. Not even during the project implementation was a service interruption necessary - the traffic of the stations was added to the rest of equipment without disconnecting the network. The easy installation of Cisco’s technology contributed greatly to the progress of MetrôRio Wi-Fi project.
Image by Mariordo (Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz) (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
