The vast protected area of natural beauty that is Dartmoor National Park, in south Devon, England, will be offering free Wi-Fi access to the visiting public. Thanks to a Box Wi-Fi solution, from The Cloud, the park will be able to provide mobile phone coverage at all three main visitor-centres. The Box kit allows small organisations to offer free Wi-Fi to customers. The park had done a 6-month trial last summer in the main visitor-centre, before deciding on the free Wi-Fi service. They will be soon rolling out the service on the remaining 2 visitors centres, in time for the next season in 2015.
Although 2.4 million visitors arrive annually, the park previously hardly had a basic signal across the area. It would be too difficult to convince a mobile operator to make such a high investment to serve in such a remote area and the risk of spoiling the landscape too was an issue.
The ICT and premises head, Ali Bright, said that a separate cloud based network actually protected the park’s information, as the park’s authority acts as a local authority too. The 2-member IT team could also hand over the network’s responsibility over the provider effectively, he pointed out. He also added that the free Wi-Fi at the visitors centres gave a host of opportunities and put the visitor at the centre of things, besides the facility being set-up on a suitable budget.