NEWS
Bryant Park Selects Sky-Packets to Install Latest Wi-Fi Upgrade
NEW YORK – August 1, 2011 – Sky-Packets, a leading provider of cutting-edge Wi-Fi mesh technology announced today that it had been selected by the Bryant Park Corporation to give one of Manhattan's most famous parks a Wi-Fi upgrade. Utilizing high-end technology from Meraki, the new installation will provide free Wi-Fi throughout the 9.6-acre park, offering even more visitors quality high-speed internet.
The award-winning Bryant Park, located on 6th Avenue between 40th and 42nd, includes the longest expanse of grass in Manhattan south of Central Park and is a prime New York City destination for locals and tourists alike. Daily attendance counts often exceed 800 people per acre, making it the most densely occupied urban park in the world.
Bryant Park has offered free Wi-Fi since 2002. But the explosion of demand for wireless Internet access caused by the proliferation of tablets, smart phones, and laptops necessitated an upgrade. Bryant Park Corporation selected Sky-Packets for a more robust solution that would support heavy usage and provide better management and reporting.
"Bryant Park was one of the first to offer free Wi-Fi in the city," explained Henry Quintin, CEO of Sky-Packets. "Their 2002 network set a standard for Wi-Fi at the time, and many people took advantage of the free service. As new Wi-Fi devices became popular and the demand for the network escalated, it was clear that the existing infrastructure needed a change. By implementing a Meraki wireless mesh solution, we have been able to increase coverage, capacity, and throughput throughout the Park. Bryant Park has once again set the standard for free public Wi-Fi access."
George Townley, Director of Information Systems for Bryant Park Corporation, confirmed that new mobile devices are having a huge impact.
"We used to see a lot of laptops in the park, but now it has shifted to smart phones and iPads," he said. "Usage is going up astronomically."
Since the Meraki deployment, the Bryant Park network averages over 20,000 distinct clients per month. Monday night movie nights are particularly crowded, with nearly 2000 users on the network. During such busy periods, Townley utilizes Meraki's built-in layer seven application traffic shaping to maintain quality of service for everyone.
DNA Info recently named Bryant Park one of the best hotspots in the city, and Townley says users are delighted with the new network.
"We follow the Twitter feeds, and in the past there was always someone complaining that the Wi-Fi was down or slow," he said. "But since we put in the Sky-Packets Meraki solution, all the feedback seems to be positive."
About Sky-Packets
Sky-Packets is a forward thinking company whose mission is to provide Wi-Fi mesh technology to Businesses, Property Managers, Developers, Municipalities, Commercial and Business Districts. With Wi-Fi Mesh, Sky-Packets offers a lower-cost, higher service level alternative to accessing high-speed internet service. Sky-Packets, a division of Corporate Biznis, Inc., is based in Nassau County, New York and is a privately held company. Some of Sky-Packets' clients include the Bryant Park Corporation, March of Dimes, Brooklyn Public Library, Long Island Veterans Hospital, Holliswood Hospital, Downtown Alliance, Flatiron 23rd Street Partnership, and the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation.
About Bryant Park Corporation
Bryant Park Corporation (BPC) is a not-for-profit, private management company and a cooperating business improvement district of neighboring property owners. It was established by Daniel A. Biederman and Andrew Heiskell, with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. BPC was formed to restore historic Bryant Park, which had suffered a severe decline in conditions in the 1970s. It is the largest effort in the nation to apply private management backed by private funding to a public park, and it has been a success with the public, press, and nearby institutions.
About Meraki
Meraki is the leader in Cloud Networking. 100% cloud-based from day one, Meraki's architecture delivers out-of-the-box security, scalability, and management to enterprise networks. Meraki has been deployed in over 18,000 customer networks worldwide, including Stanford University, British Telecom, Burger King, Starbucks, and M.I.T. Meraki was named a visionary in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Wireless LAN, and won Techworld's Wireless and Mobility Product of the Year. Meraki is located in San Francisco, California, and is funded in part by Sequoia Capital and Google. For more information, visit
www.meraki.com.
Downtown Alliance Opens Two New Wi-Fi Hotspots in Lower Manhattan
Source: Downtown Alliance
February 4th, 2011
The Alliance for Downtown New York has boosted its Wi-Fi network to give residents, workers and visitors even more opportunities to get free coverage in Lower Manhattan, with new hotspots at Peter Minuit Plaza and the pedestrian seating area at Whitehall and Water streets.
The Downtown Alliance’s network now includes 12 hotspots spanning more than half a million square feet in parks and public spaces in Lower Manhattan from City Hall Park to Bowling Green.
“Peter Minuit Plaza and the New York City Department of Transportation’s new pedestrian seating area on Water Street are both beautifully renovated places to relax and take a break in Lower Manhattan, and now they’ve got free Wi-Fi,” said Elizabeth H. Berger, President of the Downtown Alliance. “With a dozen Wi-Fi locations — and more on the horizon — Lower Manhattan’s 55,000 residents, 300,000 workers and six million annual visitors now more places to go online for free.”
The Downtown Alliance established the Lower Manhattan Wireless Network in 2003, and its 12 hotspots were recently upgraded with higher bandwidth, new technology and expanded coverage. The network is designed to allow anyone to walk to a hotspot within minutes from any point below Chambers Street, enable connection speeds as fast as DSL (digital subscriber line) and accommodate more than 254 users simultaneously at each location.
The Downtown Alliance network has witnessed astronomical growth in usage. In 2010, the number of connections onto the Network skyrocketed by more than 96 percent over 2009. Currently, the network receives more than 8,300 connections (on average) each month. Despite the blistering cold and snow, the Downtown Alliance recorded almost 5,600 log-ons and almost 500 gigabytes of data transferred by Wi-Fi users in January.
Melville, New York-based Sky-Packets installs and maintains the hotspots for the Downtown Alliance. To learn about the installation process, visit our blog at http://blog.downtownny.com/2010/08/bringing-wi-fi-to-the-elevated-acre/.
Wi-Fi is available at:
- Peter Minuit Plaza
- Pedestrian Plaza at Water and Whitehall streets
- The Elevated Acre
- The Plaza at 7 World Trade Center
- Bowling Green
- The British Garden at Hanover Square
- City Hall Park
- South Street Seaport
- Stone Street
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza
- Winter Garden and Plaza at the World Financial Center
- The Atrium at 60 Wall Street.
Village, County Collaborate to Offer Free Wi-Fi Access
Source: Babylon Village Patch
November 23, 2010
Free Wi-Fi has arrived in Babylon Village thanks to a $25,000 Suffolk County grant and a collaborative effort between county and village officials.
While wireless Internet isn't new in the village downtown, as local businesses including Babylon Bean-Coffee Extreme provide customers with free access, the project does mark Babylon Village as the first in the county to provide free Wi-Fi to residents and businesses.
New Wi-Fi antennas have created several hotspots around the downtown area: from the Gazebo on Main Street and running east to Route 231; from the intersection of Main Street and Deer Park Avenue, running north along Deer Park Avenue to the Long Island Rail Road overpass, and a hotspot at the village marina. The antennas were installed by Corporate Bizness.
Babylon Village Chamber President Jon Taylor described the effort as a "serious benefit" to the business community.
"It will allow easy on-line access for our business associates, vendors, and visitors to the village," Taylor told Patch. "Not only does it provide the obvious business advantages, but will also allow visitors to access information on what is happening in our village, in a real-time, dynamic way. The village is to be commended for moving forward with this project to the benefit of our businesses, residents, and visitors alike."
The effort will formally be announced today at a 12:30 p.m. press conference held by Legislator Wayne Horsley and Babylon Village Mayor Ralph Scordino at Barrique Restaurant.
According to a press statement, Horsley secured the necessary funding while Scordino oversaw the planning and implementation.
"Once again Babylon Village is on the cutting edge and has pushed to the next step in community services. With the recent installation of Wi-Fi antennas, we have made free Internet available to every patron and business owner in the village's downtown as well as visitors to Argyle Park," said Horsely in the statement.
Plum Daily Hamptons
Source: Plum TV
Sept. 13, 2010
Sag Harbor Goes Wireless
Source: The East Hamption Star
Aug. 19, 2010
Sag Harbor Village has gone live, thanks to an initiative sponsored by the nonprofit Save Sag Harbor group that has set up a free wireless Internet network there. With the installation of a few antennas, residents and
Kate Maier
The group Save Sag Harbor has set up a free wireless network in the village. On Tuesday, a Web surfer put the new network to the test outside the Java Nation coffee shop. visitors will be able to surf the Internet on Main Street, Water Street, Bay Street, and at the marine basin.
While the $8,000 setup price was covered by Save Sag Harbor, the group is hoping to recoup some of the cost by soliciting sponsors to place ads on the network’s homepage. So far it’s been a resounding success. The annual fee is $365 for a homepage ad where businesses can link directly from that page to their Web sites.
Antennas were placed on top of Emporium Hardware and the Bay Street Theatre, with smaller ones in places throughout the village, such as Cavaniola’s wine shop.
Nick Gazzolo, a Save Sag Harbor board member, called the new service “a digital welcome mat for the town. When you walk down the street with an iPhone, you get a ton of networks, but they’re either secured or you’re just being sneaky” by logging on. “We wanted to say, ‘Hey, this is free by design.’ ”
“To our knowledge, we’re the first village on the East End to have free municipal WiFi,” he added. The company that installed it, Sky Packets, has deals pending with several other Long Island business districts.
Henry Quintin, the president of the company, which is based in Melville, said that in theory users should be able to stroll down the street while surfing the Web. The hardware is produced by Meraki, a California company that developed wireless networks for Harvard and M.I.T.
“What we do is we take a business-class Internet setup, we shoot the signal using our wireless access point wherever we want the coverage areas, and provide a seamless wireless mesh,” Mr. Quintin said.
Sky Packets has installed networks in public libraries, 10 areas in Lower Manhattan, and in Babylon, where last year public parks and beaches went wireless. That initiative allowed the municipality to set up security cameras in hard-to-reach places on the Captree Island side of Great South Bay, with the hope of cutting down on vandalism there.
“The downturn in the economy didn’t affect us one bit,” Mr. Quintin said. “Business districts are looking to attract more people,” and wireless seems to be working.
“Save Sag Harbor has long encouraged people to shop locally and support our businesses on Main Street,” Mr. Gazzolo said. The group was originally formed to lobby for an updated zoning code to preserve the character of the nearly 300-year-old village.
When the board came up with the plan in January, “we saw it as how technology can actually support the preservation of the village, in a way,” Mr. Gazzolo said. “It’s not something that’s in your face; people can use it or forget about it.”
“Really, we know a lot of people come to shop and be offline and have a day off or a week off, and we certainly support those folks in forgetting about technology,” he said. “We were thinking, if we made it a little easier to stay connected, people might come who weren’t planning to come.”
WI-FI MESH TECHNOLOGY PROVIDER, SKY-PACKETS, LAUNCHES NEWLY REDESIGNED WEBSITE
July 20th, 2010
MELVILLE, NY – July 20, 2010 –Sky-Packets, a Wi-Fi mesh technology provider and authorized Meraki reseller, offering low cost Wi-Fi mesh network solutions announced the launch of its freshly redesigned website last week. The new site, which can be found at, www.sky-packets.com, optimizes the overall user experience of visitors by offering a sleeker design and comprehensive platform of information regarding optimal Wi-Fi solutions offered today.
“With the new site, our existing and future customers and partners will now engage in a more vibrant and seamless web experience. In addition to being a primary resource for advances in Wi-Fi related technology, the new site will reflect today’s social networking expectations,” says Steve Amarante, VP of Business Development for Sky Packets.
The website features a freshly redesigned layout offering dynamic aesthetics with moving graphics. The overall site provides a clear set of information to assist customers with their choice of an appropriate Wi-Fi solution. Sky-Packets helps Property Managers, Developers, Municipalities, Commercial and Business Districts install and manage Wi-Fi solutions that connect people and communities.
Sky-Packets provides all aspects of wireless network implementation and consulting, including but not limited to, Virtual Site Surveys, Pre-Installation On-Site Inspection, System Specification, Hardware Acquisition, On-Site Installation Services, System Configuration, Back-end Captive Portal web login screen customization, and Full System Support. Sky-Packets is also a proud partner of Meraki, Inc, The New York State Builders Association, and The Queens and Bronx Building Association.
To learn more about Sky-Packets and the Wi-Fi mesh technology solutions they offer please visit www.sky-packets.com.
Stephanie Biscow
Black Rhino Solutions, Inc.
Business Relations Manager
sbiscow@blackrhinosolutions.com
1.888.512.0224
