Staying connected on the slopes

Valle Nevado Park, a ski resort and park close to Santiago Chile, is located at the centre of mountains 3700 m high above sea level, boasting one of the best terrain parks in South America. In winter season, temperatures in Valle Nevado can reach as low as —15°C, making the park perfect for winter sports such as snowboarding and skiing. The resort is the center for many attractions — cable cars, restaurants, recreational buildings — all of which have several kilometers between them, causing network connectivity access to be restricted. In order to ensure that its customers received the best possible service, the park decided it needed to significantly increase its connection offering.

Valle Nevado considered implementing a fiber optic network, however this was expensive and a major risk due to high snowfall in the winter, which can reach as high as 2 meters. The park was looking for a hardened solution that could also support low temperatures, with fast installation. The network would have to be readily available for the critical services in the park, such as the sales desk, ticket readers, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services.

Servired Chile, partner of InfiNet Wireless, specialize in the development and implementation process of telecommunication services, offering high technical support throughout the execution. Servired was approached by Valle Nevado Park to help provide accessible network access across the park. Servired began to design a point-to-multipoint network that could give communication access to all sites of the park.

Servired planned, designed and implemented the first links of the solution using InfiNet Wireless technology. Servired installed the InfiLINK 2×2 wireless high-speed Point-to-Point solution for the main channels, and the InfiMAN 2×2 base stations and terminals (Point-to-Multipoint) for the last mile connection. The InfiMAN 2×2 was deployed at three base stations to bring service to 12 separate remote units around the park, ensuring a long-range rural connectivity. Each base station had a backhaul link to the central site using InfiLINK 2×2 at 5 GHz, in order for Valle Nevado Park to provide seamless connectivity of up to 300 Mbps.

Servired Chile helped the customer at all stages. It created the overall design of the solution, imported InfiNet Wireless units from the factory, completed the installation of the products, and undertook rigorous integration tests, ensuring that the solution was working and in operation mode before winter, the parks busiest season, arrived.

Valle Nevado Park now has the critical communication it needs to operate wirelessly throughout the park. The solutions provided by InfiNet Wireless and Servired Chile provided data communication to all different areas in the park, such as cable car entrances. The solution has also provided Valle’s customers the option to use card to access the cable cars across the park, which was previously not an available method of payment anywhere in the park.

The park has integrated critical systems since the solution has been implemented, with future plans arising from this solution, including the implementation of CCTV in remote areas and WiFi services.

“The technology of Infinet Wireless and determination of Servired Chile has been fundamental to helping Valle Park grow technologically. It has helped innovate our park, allowing us real and continuous wireless internet at different points of the park, in a simple and fast implementation,” said Miguel Yanine, Manager at Valle Nevado Park. “We are very satisfied with the solutions implemented so far and we look forward to continuing to grow together with the help of Infinet Wireless products and Servired Chile solutions.”