Temple Street Children’s University Hospital Takes Advantage of eir’s WiFi Expertise

As part of its IT enhancement programme, free, secure WiFi is now available in the public areas at Temple Street Children’s University Hospital. The development is thanks to a state-of the-art system, known as Advantage WiFi, introduced by eir Business. Temple Street, founded in 1872, is an acute national paediatric hospital that cares for 145,000 children on an in-patient and out-patient basis from across the country every year. Over 50,000 of these children attend the ED (Emergency Department). 

eir Business was chosen as Temple Street’s ‘solution provider’ due to their ability to navigate the complexities of the project and implement a service that worked effectively and efficiently. The age and construction of the Victorian hospital building, which is almost 150 years old, means that providing WiFi throughout has been a considerable challenge. Further considerations included working within specific safety guidelines set out by the hospital when installing WiFi, so as not to affect medical devices, while also ensuring coverage is available throughout.

This core product offers Temple Street adequate capacity for its needs today, but it can also be upgraded to offer extra bandwidth and additional access points should they be required in the future. Eavann Murphy, Chief Commercial Officer, eir Business, explains, “Advantage WiFi is a very flexible product offering a suite of technical solutions and capabilities but also other customer engagement and marketing services, although the latter are not in use in Temple Street. It’s a product that we find is popular with a variety of businesses that engage directly with consumers such as restaurants, retail outlets, hospitality locations etc”.

Speaking about the long-awaited introduction of public Wi-Fi to Temple Street, Dairín Hines, Head of ICT, Temple Street said, “We are absolutely delighted to now be in a position to offer free, secure, high-speed Wi-Fi access to the thousands of families and children that pass through Temple Street every year allowing them stay connected with their lives beyond the hospital. The WiFi can be accessed in our reception areas, Outpatient Departments (OPD) and ED through personal devices and has already been very well received since it went live at the beginning of January 2016. We are entirely grateful for the support and expertise provided by eir Business in finding a solution to make this possible in a building as old as Temple Street with its complex architecture”.

The eir Advantage WiFi solution involves the installation of components such as a 200Mb ultrafast broadband connection; a content filtering solution; a business grade router and a suitable number of access points to provide the required WiFi coverage. The network installation includes Advantage WiFi cloud management and application control to ensure that the Hospital can simply manage network accessibility, as well as content filtering and general security and controls, all of which were provided in partnership with Xirrus and Ucopia.

“Simply put, eir as a vendor was in a position to be able to address the very real issues. They made the complex simple and have provided us with a solution that works perfectly today but also has scope for significant development” continued Dairín Hines, Head of ICT, Temple Street.

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For further details please contact Nikki Gordon, Communications & PR Consultant, eir Press Office on 087 7985759 or ei.ri1508829868e@nod1508829868rog.i1508829868kkin1508829868