Case Studies

ARENA TOURIST

The Challenge:

Arena Tourist, one of Italy's largest European-wide tour organizers, annually serves thousands of vacationers throughout the Mediterranean. One of its most popular holiday destinations is the Istria Peninsula (also known as Istrija), which sits on the shore of the Adriatic Sea, opposite Venice, Italy. Arena Tourist provides customers pre-arranged and customized vacations packages in cities like Pula, on one of the most beautiful bays on the Adriatic. But beautiful views and tours of historic monuments are not all that the modern travel agency wanted to offer its clients. As Arena's facilities in Pula continued to grow — it operates a campground, hotel, and yacht club — its management team sought to enhance the firm's reservation system and communications for guests who want high-speed Internet connectivity and teleconference services. Its challenge was to provide high-bandwidth communications services for clients and guests in a region with very little access to fiber-optic cable networks.

The Solution:

For the highest bandwidth and most reliable network solution, Italian telecommunications equipment distributor Essentia suggested a point-to-point wireless network, including optical wireless products from LightPointe. Arena Tourist needed to provide an optical wireless solution that could be deployed quickly, efficiently and inexpensively — a leader in Optical Wireless solutions based on free-space optics (FSO) technology, LightPointe's optical wireless products are now at work in thousands of installations in more than 60 countries.

Essentia didn't even consider fiber-optic cable due to high costs, and the fact that this solution — digging up streets and more — would be far too disruptive to Pula's culture. Pula is an ancient city and very protective of preserving its European heritage and architectural treasures. Instead, Arena chose a LightPointe FlightSpectrum™ combined with complementary wireless networking gear.

To connect all of Arena Tourist's facilities, Essentia provided a dozen wireless links, with distances ranging from 800 to 2,500 meters. Eleven of the network links are 2.4 Gigahertz ISM band radios. For the network link of 2,500 meters, Essentia deployed a LightPointe FlightSpectrum atop two rooftops. The layer one solution of the FlightSpectrum seamlessly integrates into networks, acting the same as a piece of fiber-optic cable but without the need to trench streets and bury underground. The LightPointe line-of-sight free-space optic (FSO)-based systems provide connections in a little as a day after site surveys and installation preparations are completed.

Essentia chose the LightPointe FlightSpectrum because of its four-beam design that delivers overlapping signals and improved performance over longer distances. The FlightSpectrum's price was also easy on the pocketbook, offering an attractive price-per-bit solution versus competing technology options of similar bandwidth. For Arena Tourist clients' online booking and other payment transactions, a secure networking link was vital. The FlightSpectrum — as with all of LightPointe optical wireless gear — offers the ultimate in security and is immune to interference or interception.

Should the network needs of Arena Tourist or other clients change, Essentia can recommend a host of options with the LightPointe family of Optical Wireless products. LightPointe offers connectivity solutions of 10 megabits, 20 megabits, 52 megabits, 100 megabits, 155 megabits, 622 megabits, 1.25 gigabits and 2.5 gigabits.

Sound Byte:

"With LightPointe, we have a trusted partner that can ship quickly and provide solid technical support-two critical ingredients for telecommunication success when working with the tourism industry. For a customer like Arena Tourist, we had a complex network to assemble . For the longest distance in their network deployment - bridging a camping site and hotel - we needed a secure bridge that was at least 20 megabits in bandwidth, the perfect job for a LightPointe optical wireless link."
— Ferdinando Sabatino, Sales Director of Essentia

"Because the FlightSpectrum was so easy to install, we can re-deploy the units if necessary or add more optical wireless systems if other facilities need to be connected to the network ."
— Giovanni Piovesana, Chief Executive Officer of Arena Tourist

For more information on Arena Tourist, please visit www.gardacamp.com.