HPE sets up private 5G and Wi-Fi at Ryder Cup in Rome

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has set up an integrated private 5G and Wi-Fi network at the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome in partnership with Athonet, the Italian firm it acquired earlier this year, and HPE Aruba Networking. The partners designed what HPE described as a groundbreaking integrated Wi-Fi and private 5G network to cover the demands of an event that is set to host 250,000 spectators, as well as organizers, competitors and sponsors, across the 370-acre Marco Simone Golf & Country Club.

HPE said its private 5G technology provides wide-area coverage to all corners of the golf course, including the most remote parts, as well as a secure private network dedicated to critical operations staff, adding that the deployment is an early realisation of the company’s vision when it acquired Athonet in June 2023.

The network also uses the latest Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E technologies to deliver twice as much capacity as the 2018 Ryder Cup in Paris via more than 800 Wi-Fi access points. The backbone of the network is built on 200 HPE Aruba Networking CX switches with AI-powered HPE Aruba Networking Central for network management providing a single point of visibility and control across the entire network. 

The private 5G network, meanwhile, covers the golf course with one radio mast located in a central location powered by the Athonet Tactical Cube, a compact and mobile private cellular platform for mission-critical applications. In that regard, HPE noted that although Italy has allocated all 5G spectrum to mobile service providers, the Italian government made an exception for the Ryder Cup, providing access to the 3.8 GHz band.

In addition, the Ryder Cup event will be one of the first global use cases for the new sustainability dashboard on the HPE GreenLake platform that delivers insights on IT energy consumption, carbon emissions and electricity costs, said the company.