Challenges

• Provide free, secure Wi-Fi on the London Underground to Virgin Media broadband and mobile customers
• Provide free public Wi-Fi to London Underground staff and passengers in time for the London 2012 Olympics
• Offer Wi-Fi access to multiple devices, including smart phones, laptops, or tablet PCs to meet customer demand for mobile data
• Provide high levels of system and network availability to allow users fast internet access while they are waiting for a train or while their train is in an London Underground station
• Take advantage of spare capacity on the cable network during the daytime between morning and evening peaks, while offering extra value to Virgin Media customers
• Use new platform to offer additional services to Virgin Media customers in the future

Solutions

• Delivered Wi-Fi access to 72 London Underground stations within just three months, in time for the London Olympics—with 92 stations on-line by December 2012 and plans to expand to 120 stations by early 2013
• Adopted an identity-driven approach to Wi-Fi access to provide the rapid, seamless authentication required to enable customers to access the internet while in the London Underground
• Accelerated access to Websites with HTML5 caching, by quickly downloading portal content onto user devices, so that customers can continue to browse while traveling between London Underground stations
• Enabled customers to access mobile internet services throughout the day from any device while traveling on the London Underground, taking advantage of spare capacity on Virgin Media’s network, while providing value-added services
• Worked with Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services to test performance on existing infrastructure and followed recommendations to upgrade to Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition 11g and to upgrade memory to at least 128 GB to manage expected load
• Implemented new infrastructure to manage expected load, including Sun Server X4470-M2 systems, Oracle Virtual Directory, Oracle Entitlements Server, and Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition, to provide extremely fast read/write performance, resilience, and high availability, and to enable reuse for future services
• Deployed Oracle Virtual Directory to act as an abstraction layer over Virgin Media’s two lightweight directory access protocol data sources simultaneously to speed authentication and enable thousands of train customers to access the internet during a short timeframe of just two minutes while a train is in the station
• Enabled reuse of London Underground Oracle deployment as a platform for authorizing other services in the future, such as enabling customers to view on-demand video content and eventually pay-per-view TV from any device and at any location

Partner

Virgin Media worked with Oracle partner and Identity Management specialist aurionPro SENA to develop its identity management and authentication strategy for the London Underground Wi-Fi initiative. The telecommunications systems underpinning the Virgin Media Wi-Fi service included numerous back-end systems—all with separate databases and directories. aurionPro SENA aggregated the systems to achieve a single view of each user by placing a virtual directory layer over the disparate back-end systems.

“aurionPro SENA helped us to deliver a hugely successful project. WiFi on London Underground was a huge success when it went live in summer 2012, and we have the infrastructure in place to add more underground stations, putting the power of our fiber optic network in millions of people’s hands, ” said Perry Banton, IT architect, Virgin Media.

Resources

• Virgin Media Transforms Supply Chain to Support Profitability and Growth