It was not only high-speed communication that won the structured cabling contract at Karaiskaki stadium 10km from the centre of Athens. Fast delivery and installation also kept SYSTIMAX Solutions, ahead of the competition. SYSTIMAX Solutions distributor, Anixter, and BusinessPartner, S Nianios SA finished the 2 000-outlet network in 12 weeks so the stadium would be ready a month before the opening of the 2004 Athens Olympics.
The stadium, one of three used for the Games, began life as the velodrome for cycle races at the first modern Olympics in 1896. Following a re-modelling in the 1960s, the latest 60 million euro reconstruction has made it a world-class soccer facility. With more than 33 000 seats accessed via 34 entrance gates, it is equipped with advanced communications, security and entry control systems.
To provide the stadium with high-speed cabling infrastructure, the project's lead contractor, J&P Construction Company, turned to Nianios and SYSTIMAX Solutions. Working closely with Anixter, Nianios proposed a solution using SYSTIMAX GigaSPEED XL copper cabling and a SYSTIMAX LazrSPEED fiber backbone. This combination can easily support the heavy network traffic during major sporting events.
The LazrSPEED fibre, with potential for 10Gbps throughput, avoids any dataflow bottlenecks in the backbone at times of peak demand. With the 1Gbps GigaSPEED XL horizontal cabling, this ensures vital systems, such as CCTV and automated entry gates, always send and receive information without delay.
SYSTIMAX Structured Connectivity Solutions Design and routing of cabling at the stadium was challenging because of its shape. Consultants, Antonis Pantazis and Associates, dealt with this using a cabling configuration centred on a single main distribution frame. This now serves the whole stadium including its media centre, 39 VIP boxes, a shopping area and administrative offices. It also connects the museum of Olympiakos, the football club that will make the stadium its home when the Olympics are finished.
"Fast, highly reliable communications are critical at big sporting events - without them it would be impossible to control large crowds safely or give spectators and TV viewers up-to-the-moment information," said Antonis Pantazis, President and Managing Director of Antonis Pantazis and Associates Consultants SA.
"By installing the best copper and fibre solutions, Karaiskaki Stadium can confidently stage events that will be watched by tens of millions of people worldwide. It will also have the infrastructure needed by Olympiakos, one of Europe's top teams, to support advanced systems introduced in years to come."
In total, they used more than 3 500m of LazrSPEED fibre and 73 000m of GigaSPEED XL copper cabling. Compact SYSTIMAX LC connectors are used in fibre connections and GigaSPEED XL cabling is connected via SYSTIMAX 1100 Series patching hardware.
During the Olympics, the stadium hosted 12 matches in both the men and women's soccer tournaments. These consisted of seven games among the first stage qualifying groups, two quarter-finals, one of the men's semi-finals, and the women's final and third-place matches.
"Building facilities for the 2004 Olympics has been a huge project for the whole of Greece and we are glad to have contributed to it," said Nathan Rawles, Country Manager Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and Israel, SYSTIMAX Solutions. "By carefully coordinating product delivery and installation, we were able to install a high performance, high quality system at high speed - so that everything was ready on time for the opening of the Games."
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