The news is out, after spending the last 18 months working closely on a number of events Etherlive and Venue IT are merging to deliver an exciting range of technology services across the broad events industry. For existing customers the relationship and services provided remains the same, but now with access to an enhanced range of offerings, delivering more efficiency and industry leading innovation.

Full press release follows:

Technical expertise and events experience join forces

As the events and festival season get underway, Venue IT, the provider of telecommunications services to the events industry, is set to join forces with Etherlive.  Merging into a single business unit, the two companies will work together to offer a range of communications services and consultancy to the events industry.

Chris Green, Managing Director at Etherlive comments, “With our strong technology background and Venue IT’s events history and experience, we’re a great fit.  Having worked successfully together for a year and a half on a number of projects, the most logical step was to join forces and work as one.  We’re excited about the prospects ahead and look forward to delivering solutions that enhance the experience of organisers, exhibitors and visitors at all sorts of events across the UK.”

Mike Lang, of Venue IT adds, “This relationship offers our loyal clients the best of both worlds; they will continue to deal with the same people offering the same high level of personal service, and will benefit from increased resources with a new found capacity to deliver not only a range of services from its existing portfolio, but more importantly new and exciting complimentary services – exactly what you need for a successful event.”

Founded in 2004, Venue IT provides telecommunication solutions to some of the most prestigious outdoor national and international events held in the UK.  Among its customers, Venue IT boasts names such as Southampton Boat Show, CLA Gamefair, Red Bull X Fighters, World Triathlon Games, Frieze Art Fair and Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Wiltshire-based and in business since 2007, Etherlive is a specialist event IT company that designs, implements and supports both temporary and permanent IT solutions for events. Etherlive supports organisers, promoters and venue managers as they deal with the challenges of security, communications and monitoring across large and complex sites.

Etherlive’s customer base includes one-off short duration corporate events, specialist permanent installations and annual large scale temporary events.  Customers include WOMAD, the Green Man Festival, Get Loaded in the Park, Silverstone, the Three Counties Showground, and corporate clients such as Nokia, Amazon, Littlewoods, Intel and the BBC.

Initially, the company will maintain both the ‘Etherlive’ and the ‘Venue IT’ brands.  The company will operate from the Etherlive headquarters in Wiltshire.

ENDS

About Etherlive

A successful event depends on great performances. From WOMAD and The Green Man Festival to Southampton Boat Show and the Three Counties Show, we are the ones that make IT work. Etherlive sits behind the scenes delivering reliable Wi-Fi internet, telephony, laptops, PDQs and interactive messaging. Whether in a field or a building, we make connectivity simple.

http://events.etherlive.co.uk

For further information contact:

Helen Stevens

www.ascentpr.co.uk

t. 01454 629 741

etherlive@ascentpr.co.uk

Like many open spaces in the UK, Poole Park is constantly looking for new services to offer to its visitors.  Friends of Poole Park, who are a local volunteer organisation working with the council, recently undertook a revamp of the park adding a new water fountain and bird nesting islands, alongside this they contracted Etherlive to install a community Wi-Fi internet hotspot.  Located in the centre of Poole the park offers a picturesque 60 acre lake, restaurants and cafes – all of which are used by the local community including a large percentage of local businesses (more of which the park is trying to attract) and students from Bournemouth University.

The wireless equipment installed at Poole is based on a ruggedized 802.11n meshed infrastructure providing Wi-Fi internet across the whole of the park including several buildings. The main benefit of the mesh is that each wireless unit only requires a power source such as a lamp post; all connectivity across the network is managed from one central location. In addition proxy (caching) and firewall services were installed to improve performance and security. The network will be used in the future to provide webcams and communications infrastructure for the popular Poole Park Fest.

Bob Lister of Friends of Poole Park, speaking to Poole Borough Council said: “We are delighted Wi-Fi is up and running. In addition to providing local people and visitors with new park facilities, we also anticipate event organisers will make good use of the new technology for their activities.”

By offering free community internet access Poole Park becomes a credible location for businesses to meet and students to study encouraging more visitors during the day whilst also fulfilling the recent ‘Digital Britain’ drive by the British Government which sees regular access to internet services as a must have.

Etherlive Wi-Fi installed at Poole Park

For further information see Borough of Poole News and Bournemouth Echo

Last year we introduced our ruggedized battery backup units that could run our network units for over 12 hours, this year we have gone much further. Our latest smart power supply offers nanosecond switching between redundant power sources and highly efficient power conversion which has allowed us to push up battery operation to over 24 hours and, with the option for multiple hot-swap batteries, this can be extended indefinitely.

These units can source their input power, what we call ‘red power’, from 110-240V mains supply or from a generator and now, with an eye on the environment, they also have the option of using solar, wind or fuel cell generation.

The smart power supply deals with providing the protected ‘green power’ to the network units and other associated devices such as CCTV cameras or VoIP phones, only switching to a battery if required. What’s more is that these units are designed with remote monitoring so that we can see the status of each unit in our network operations centre.

The important thing is that whether you are a running a small press centre Wi-Fi zone or a 150 acre festival site you shouldn’t just cross your fingers and hope the power stays on.

We took the chance to discuss some of the new products and services that we are launching for the 2009 event season. In the Wi-Fi space we have increased our range of solutions to include a new market leading technology that is ideal for the events industry as it is specially designed to work in ‘noisy’ environments using a patented beam-steering technology. This gives excellent connectivity even when rogue wireless units appear on site or large lorries start creating disturbances! These devices also support the new ‘n’ standard giving a much higher (300Mbps) throughput, ideal for services such as video streaming.

Power independence remains a key factor in our site designs so that our network and communication services remain operational whether a generator fails or not. Our power units switch from generator/mains to battery in a few milliseconds with no loss of service and can remain on battery for up to 24 hours (or longer if required) if site power is a problem.

Site Operations is another area where we have been busy. Extending on our modular ‘POD’ design we now have a special version aimed at providing all the key services at a remote site from a small unit that can be deployed quickly when staff first arrive on site. It’s pretty much a portable  ‘office IT environment’ keeping a site operations team connected and productive from anywhere.

To round off the enhanced line-up a new mobile phone ‘portal’ or event guide was also on display. Working across a large range of phones (with no Java download) the guide is highly customisable and varies user experience based on their connection type (2G, 3G, Wi-Fi, etc). It can also be used in an interactive fashion enabling features such as uploads and voting.

As always further information is available on the website or we are more than happy to demonstrate these new technologies and services either at our base in Wiltshire or on a suitable customer site. Let’s just hope that 2009 brings a better summer!

The show was a great success for us, with lots of interest in our newer services such as real-time location tracking, video streaming and event portals on handheld devices. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the stand for a chat and if you couldn’t make the show check out our website for further information on our latest services.

Green Man festival goes wireless press release