Greater Toronto Airports Authority

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) engaged HP to design, build and maintain one of North America's largest wireless environments at Toronto Pearson International Airport, Canada's busiest airport.

The GTAA is responsible for the management and operation of Pearson International Airport - a facility that has more than 70,000 people on-site, including employees from the airlines, aviation support, passenger, retail and food services, and the Canadian government, located in facilities across almost 1,800 hectares. In 2002, 26 million passengers traveled through Pearson, arriving and departing on more than 60 airlines.

Flexible, scalable and secure

The GTAA selected HP to develop, install and manage a secure and scalable wireless local area network (WLAN) that could flexibly support mission critical applications, such as the Baggage Reconciliation System, Baggage Tracking System and Common-Use Self-Service System.

The WLAN can support additional airport and tenant's mobile applications, such as mobile aircraft inspection and maintenance, wireless voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), unified messaging, mobile ramp management, wireless document imaging and printing, airport security and surveillance and wireless point of sale applications.

As part of its visionary Airport Development Program, the GTAA is building a new terminal (new Terminal 1) that will merge and replace the operations of two existing terminals. The new, larger and innovatively designed terminal will be capable of accommodating millions of additional passengers each year. For the GTAA, it was important that passengers at new Terminal 1 receive a new benchmark in customer service. It was also vital that the airlines could scale their presence within the new terminal.

With such size, and need for business process flexibility, the GTAA's technology and communications infrastructure needed to more effectively connect its highly mobile and increasingly distributed workforce, streamline essential applications and offer new services to customers and business partners.

Employees and business partners benefit.

"The travel industry has experienced considerable market pressures in the past two years. We need to constantly improve the efficiency of our operations, the productivity of our employees, and the experience we provide to business partners," said Jim Burke, Vice President IT&T, GTAA. "To remain competitive, adaptable and fiscally-responsible within this environment, we chose HP to help create a dynamic, wireless infrastructure. HP's technology and support services will enable us to offer innovative services to our customers and new capabilities to our employees and airport tenants, from airlines and hotels to retailers and restaurants."

HP is also addressing outdoor coverage for wireless operations, maintenance and vehicle location and identification applications. In addition to increasing bandwidth for rapid data transmission and capture, and improving access throughout Pearson's facilities, HP is protecting systems and privacy with new, robust security solutions.

"Wireless access introduces a new paradigm to airport customer relationship management, bringing information, services and customer interaction right to where they are," said Ann Livermore, Executive Vice President, HP Services, Hewlett-Packard Company. "HP's desire and ability to partner with the GTAA and other key technology suppliers brought another dimension to the crucial cross-functional teaming arrangement required to design, implement and manage complex technology solutions such as the Pearson International Airport wireless broadband infrastructure."

Within this project, HP is delivering a significant number of services, including project management, application development and integration, help desk, system monitoring and maintenance, billing system metering and reporting, hardware leasing, knowledge-transfer and end-user training. The GTAA is also benefiting from HP's relevant expertise in designing and implementing Intelligent Building (I-Building) solutions, including wireless voice, data and multi-media technologies.

HP employed a collaborative approach in the development of the WLAN solution, partnering with Bluesocket Ltd., Cisco Systems Ltd., Packeteer Inc., Black and McDonald Ltd., Concourse Communications Group and InteQ Corporation.

"HP assembled a superb combination of skills, experience and technology specifically to address our vision and business objectives," said Jim Burke, Vice President, IT&T, GTAA. "We are absolutely confident that through our collaboration with HP, we will to give our tenants and travelers the best possible airport experience."

© 2003 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.