Financial Times

T5's Silver Lining:

Its Wireless Network

Airport Communication

Heathrow’s latest
terminal can boast
one technological
success story, says
Ingrid Lunden

Airports were among the earliest adopters of wireless local area networks for their own staff and for customers and they remain some of the most ambitious in terms of how they would like to use their WLans to do business.

Terminal 5 opened at London's Heathrow Airport in March and is one of the latest examples of how a WLan is providing vital connectivity simultaneously for air transport staff and for the retail operation on the other side of the gates.

The network - a joint project between wireless network vendor Aruba, consultancy Arup and Heathrow Airport's owner BAA - has been a cornerstone of Terminal 5 from the earliest days of the construction phase, when 100 access points were set up for engineers and construction staff. Today, 52,000 people move through the terminal every day.

Alan Newbold, IP design leader for Arup, says the network carries data for both loungeside and airside traffic. Airside applications include apron services, such as software to facilitate baggage reconciliation and services that allow crew to scan in baggage, while loungeside services include Wi-Fi hotspots for passengers, using BT Openzone, and connectivity services for retailers in the terminal.

Unfortunately, for many people T5 quickly became synonymous with much of what is bad about air travel. Not only were its planning and building stages mired in environmental protests, but when it opened in March it was plagued by the notorious baggage handling fiasco that saw thousands of pieces of luggage go missing.

But since those opening weeks, T5 has been operating much more smoothly and the number of flights handled has been gradually increasing.

Kevin Fallon, commercial leader, T5 Systems at BAA, says both BAA and British Airways are still very sensitive on the issue of what exactly went wrong during the opening of T5, but one thing that appears certain is that the wireless network was perhaps the one thing that did not fall over during the chaos.

"It was the interaction with the system rather than the system itself," he says. "The system was designed to take a certain load, but with the large number of bags on the system, it could not take it and needed to be rebooted. But it was not a fundamental failure."

Mr Newbold at Arup says his company is using the wireless implementation at T5 as a template for how to run its next project at the airport, Heathrow East (a replacement for Terminal 2).

"The operational lessons are being documented at the moment," he says. "BAA has recognised that people and process and technology all have to work together to open on time and within budget."

Mr Fallon at BAA adds that another lesson that BAA learned through its wireless implementation was the benefit of going with the company best suited to the task, even if it was not the biggest. Before selecting Aruba as its vendor, "we got all the lead players in the wireless industry involved in our procurement process," he says.

"The range of services that T5 wished to offer over the WLan and the technological challenge we presented as a result meant there was unlikely to be an existing solution. So, we had to spend quite some time asking who could deliver what we wanted, and who was willing to work with us."

Mr Newbold at Arup says that there was never a question about what kind of technology would be used for the data network.

"Using a WLan gives BAA flexibility for more bandwidth, and it's also the direction the industry is heading with higher throughput and devices in the 5.2 Gigahertz spectrum," he says.

Mr Newbold says airport staff use 802.11a compatible devices but, realistically "anything with a WLan card inside it" will appear on the network.

Mr Fallon says BAA does not have any plans to use the WLan for voice services, as there is an in-building cellular system set up for voice communications.

But Mr Newbold points out that this could be something explored in the future. "The system was designed in such a way that voice can be enabled in certain routes with guaranteed coverage. The problem is that none of the handsets we have are enabled to do that at the moment."