Fukuoka underground shopping arcade turned into vast WiFi hot spot

ntttttttttttt

Kyushu University and PicoCELA Inc have successfully installed wireless internet access points throughout Fukuoka’s Tenjin Chikagai, one of Japan’s largest underground shopping arcades.

Tenjin Chikagai is a 1.2-km-long dual concourse underground arcade with over 150 business tenants. In celebration of the arcade’s 35th anniversary on Sept 1, its 400,000 daily visitors can now enjoy free high-speed access at one of the country’s largest underground WiFi hot spots.

Prior to the advent of the university’s wireless backhaul technology, constructing a multiple access point network at an expansive indoor space involved a tremendous amount of planning, labor, and expense for installing all the cabling. However, the new technology requires only a fraction of the cabling, which reduced the total installation costs for this deployment by over 86%.

Access point devices featuring the university’s groundbreaking wireless backhaul technology greatly reduce the cost of installing large-scale WiFi networks, removing a major obstacle to the creation and expansion of hot spots for 3G data offloading.

Furthermore, the unique access point devices support the direct conveyance of dynamic location-based mobile contents, a future-oriented service for visitors; potentially an on-going revenue stream for the arcade’s tenants and contents creators.