Balneário Camboriú is a city in the state of Santa Catarina, about 60 miles from the state capital, Florianópolis. The location is attractive for both national and international tourists due to its picturesque beaches and trendy parties. It is considered one of the main tourist destinations in southern Brazil and Mercosur.
The main attractions of the city are:
The traditional fireworks display on Balneário Camboriú’s Central Beach attracts tourists from all over the world, and it is the second largest New Year’s event in Brazil (second only to the fireworks display in Rio de Janeiro). New Year’s Eve in 2019 had more than 1 million people gathered on the shore to watch a 15-minute firework show. Everything was in place for the city to showcase a spectacular fireworks display, with one exception: it was important to guarantee that cell phones would work properly for all these tourists, allowing them to wish “Happy New Year” to family and friends through a phone call, via a messaging app or even by posting photos of the party on social networks.
A problem at New Year’s Eve: guaranteeing mobile coverage for tourists
New Year’s Eve in Balneário is organized by the Secretariat of Tourism and the fireworks display takes places at the Central Beach – an urban and tourist spot with the best amenities in the city. It offers great accommodation options and many bars, restaurants, stores and malls to choose from.
The beautiful landscape of the beach and its 4-mile boardwalk contrast beautifully with the skyscrapers on the waterfront. But tall buildings located along the shore are not conducive to providing cell coverage on beaches, boardwalks, restaurants and commercial stores. In addition to the height issue, another characteristic of the buildings located on the edge of Balneário Camboriú is their high rental value.
In a space where thousands of people are visiting a popular beach that is lined with several high-rise skyscrapers, the best mobile network architecture to provide capacity and quality signal is QMC’s Street Level Solutions (SLS).
The more access points we have, the better the signal level in the region. Inserting new points of coverage allows us to increase the capacity of the network, and the main result is the improvement of the user experience when using the network.
First thing’s first: the design of the solution
The focus of the project was to provide a dedicated service to the coastal region where the beaches and the most visited commercial spots are located.
The first step to design an efficient mobile network solution is to understand the architecture and urban density of the place where you want to implement the solution. It’s also important to understand the social, behavioral and economic dynamics of the region.
Another crucial aspect to developing an efficient project is to maintain constant communication with the wireless carrier, ensuring a close relationship. QMC has built and cultivated its carrier relationships over many years.
In addition to technical issues, a major challenge for the project was the deadline set for its implementation. In order to better serve its users during the holiday season (peak seasonality of traffic), the operator set December 20 as the deadline for the delivery of the contracted work. Faced with this challenge, QMC doubled its efforts by allocating its best technical resources to working full time to meet the demand.
A unique outdoor coverage challenge
The SLS solution leverages the city’s existing urban furniture , ensuring that their architectural aesthetics are not compromised.
The project was extremely entrepreneurial: a single infrastructure provider – QMC – took full responsibility for the project, which was 100% developed and implemented by QMC, including all licenses issued by the City Hall and the Competent Organs for each SLS point.
Consequently, we were able to minimize possible failures and bring greater robustness to the whole system.
Result: greater connectivity at the New Year’s Eve party
The system was delivered with coverage for the end users in just 60 days after the project was contracted.. We can highlight the following network improvements, immediately after system activation.
- Significant increase in the data throughput, in both uplink and downlink
- Improvement of signal quality in stand by and during calls
- Significant increase in the number of new users on the operator’s network
- 19 Tb of data downloaded in the sectors that make up the QMC SLS solution during the collection period
One of the greatest advantages inherent to QMC’s SLS projects is that all nodes are prepared to evolve to the next telecom generation in a simple and fast way. Each SLS system is fully licensed and ready for a quick migration to 5G at the operator’s request.
