Rockefeller Center spans 22 acres, encompassing three city blocks
Boingo Wireless has been selected to design, install and manage a new Wi-Fi 6 network at New York City’s Rockefeller Center. The center, a tourist draw with a seasonal ice-skating rink and famous for the massive Christmas trees that it erects during the holidays, spans 22 acres, encompassing three city blocks and consists of more than seven million square feet spread across 12 buildings featuring a diverse ecosystem of restaurants, shops and office space.
Boingo will provide Wi-Fi 6, or IEEE 802.11ax, connectivity to both Rockefeller Center’s indoor and outdoor public spaces. Wi-Fi 6 is ideal for device-dense environments thanks to features like 1024 quadrature amplitude modulation mode (1024-QAM), which increases throughput in Wi-Fi devices and transmit beamforming, which enables higher data rates at a given range resulting in greater network capacity.
Further, Wi-Fi 6 has Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) and 160-megahertz channels. OFDMA effectively shares channels to increase network efficiency and lower latency for both uplink and downlink traffic in high demand environments; MU-MIMO allows more downlink data to be transferred at once and enables an access point to transmit data to a larger number of devices concurrently; and 160 MHz channels increases bandwidth to deliver greater performance with low latency.
The Boingo network will be paired with Passpoint hotspot and offload technology to deliver seamless, secure and reliable connectivity to the venue’s daily visitors, enable enhanced business operations and set the stage for a high-bandwidth experience for property tenant employees.
“Rockefeller Center is New York at its best—architecture, dining, history, culture, business and the arts all colliding within the heart of the city,” said Boingo CEO Mike Finley. “Boingo is a Wi-Fi 6 pioneer, and we’re honored to help power a new generation of connectivity at Rockefeller Center. Our Wi-Fi 6 networks provide the foundation for a host of current and emerging uses from supporting thousands of connected devices to delivering mission-critical business applications, to streaming ultra-high-definition movies or providing touchless health and safety monitoring protocols.”
