Improved visitor experience to a shopping centre struggling with mobile signal in a hilly region
The Client: Gran Jonquera Shopping Centre
Gran Jonquera is an outlet and shopping mall, located in La Jonquera in the Catalan Pyrenees in north eastern Spain. The shopping centre is a 12,000 m2 facility with a mixture of retail and restaurants.
The Challenge
The outlet is located in the Pyrenees in Spain. This is a notoriously hilly area, famous for its ski resorts. The hilly nature of the terrain, coupled with the building materials of the shopping centre, were causing problems with the mobile signal inside the centre.
The centre extends over a number of floors, and houses a mixture of retail outlets, restaurants and atriums, where visitors can shop, eat and relax.
Visitors travelling to the shopping centre expected to spend a few hours shopping and socialising. However, the lack of mobile coverage inside the building affected the visitor experience and negatively impacted the retail outlets and restaurants, who needed mobile signal for mobile apps used for modern shopping experiences, for taking VISA payments, and for the health and safety of the staff and clients.
The shopping centre required a solution that would enable all of the staff and visitors to use their mobile phones to access voice, 5G, 4G and 3G data. They required a scalable, modular system that could adapt to suit the unique layout of the building, ensuring coverage in all areas and over all floors.
They required a management free system that could support all of the local mobile signal operators and was capable of supporting unlimited numbers of simultaneous users.
The Solution
The management of the centre reached out to Grupo Espai Digital, a digital telecommunications expert, for advice on how to rectify their mobile signal issues. Grupo recommended StellaDoradus repeaters as the solution.
Grupo Espai Digital planned and installed an integrated, modular Stella Repeater Solution to amplify mobile signal throughout the 12,000m2 shopping centre. The solution involved 10 Stella Repeaters, 10 external antennas and 40 omni-directional, internal antennas.
The Result
Full voice, 4G and 3G throughout the building
Stella repeaters enabled full mobile voice signal, as well as 4G and 3G data throughout the building. This amplified signal now allows all visitors to the facility access their mobile signal without the need for WiFi management, and shoppers can access all operators’ signals while working off their own data plan.
Future proofed technological payment solution
Mobile signal has become important not only for communication purposes, but it is also playing a large part in enabling businesses to take payments. Visa terminals require mobile signal to function and customers now expect to be able to make payments with google and apple pay, using their phones.
Cost effective sustainable solution
The system was cost efficient to install, and once installed it works as a passive solution where the antennas use no energy to transmit the signal, and the repeaters themselves use a similar amount of power as a lightbulb to run.
Neat solution.
Because of the weak external mobile signal, the client was very impressed that the system was still able to cover the entire area with reliable and stable, high quality signal. The efficiency from staff was greatly increased as they could take payments quickly and use time saving mobile apps.
