- Case Study
- Lancashire County Cricket Club
Lancashire County Cricket Club
Case StudyAbout
Founded in 1864, Lancashire County Cricket Club was actually based on the site of the original Old Trafford Pavilion, built in 1857, and was home to Manchester Cricket Club. The new stand, ‘The Point’, was designed by the renowned Manchester architects BDP.
The Brief
The £32 million redevelopment of the Lancashire County Cricket Club ground required a reliable ‘always on’ high speed connection.
With a combination of existing infrastructure and ducts from the old stands all interconnecting with the new Point development, the Sudlows team worked closely with the project team to design the most resilient and cost effective routes.
The Project
Sudlows engineers deployed over 3.5km of OM4 fibre across then separate locations around the newly renovated ground.
This new fibre connectivity will deliver superfast connections for the players and media to access real time information and data from the pitch.
The OM4 optical fibre cables were routed from the players and media communications room to new and existing distribution racks in the outline building locations. Each fibre core is terminated using SC type connectors and presented in 19” rack mount fibre patch panels.
OM4 fibre was chosen for the design to enhance the system and cost benefits enabled by 850nm VCSELs for existing 1Gb/s and 10Gb/s applications as well as future 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s systems.
As part of the development, a large format display screen was installed giving the spectators unprecedented views of the game and live results.
The fibre cables selected were carefully routed via a mixture of new and existing ducts around the ground to pick up various locations, for example, the replay screen.
Resilient optical fibre cables were also installed to provide additional diversity and resilience between the players and media main communication rooms back to the existing distribution racks in the outline locations.
The Conclusion
With the new fibre infrastructure operational, the Lancashire County Cricket Club is now able to deliver both the support staff, spectators and the international media with an exceptionally resilient and flexible network that delivers high speed, large capacity and most importantly, reliable connectivity.
Testimonial
James Royle, Senior Project Manager for CRE8, Project Directors for Lancashire County Cricket Club, commented;
“The connectivity team at Sudlows were extremely committed to delivering the best fibre infrastructure that this world famous sports stadium required.
Project Manager Ken Leah and his team of fibre specialists knew how to overcome all engineering obstacles thrown at them. Their on-site efficiency and professionalism impressed both myself and the club.”
Terry Watson, Facilities Manager for LCCC said;
“Sudlows have provided an excellent Fibre Network which will provide our club support staff, players and the international media with superfast connectivity and reliable access.”
Chris Dummett, Commercial Director at Sudlows added;
“Modern sports stadiums are ideal environments for fibre infrastructures. With a requirement for a high capacity connectivity spread across multiple sites and over large distances, such factors are tailor-made for optical fibre networks.
“With the high profile success of the Olympics all major sporting facilities are now seeing the benefit of deploying high bandwidth applications. This means that high speed, high volume data can be transmitted through the large capacity optical networks.
“Superfast fibre is now the choice infrastructure for delivering high capacity network connectivity.”
Location
Manchester, UK
Value
£15,000
Size
Stadium
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