Each June, PREMIER Bankcard partners with the City of Sioux Falls to hold free Summer Developmental Track Meets. For many years, they held the meets using nothing more than cellular service and hot spots, creating challenges when it came to registration and operations of the event.
“We were trying all different kinds of things,” says Todd Fink of PREMIER Bankcard. “But the issue was we were trying to register a couple hundred people on a hot spot. It bogged it down.”
Last year, PREMIER reached out to SDN to inquire about using its Wi-Fi trailer. It was so successful, they used the trailer again this year for the meets in June at Lincoln High School in Sioux Falls.
“With the Wi-Fi trailer, it makes the registration much smoother,” says Tim Halvorson of PREMIER Bankcard. Plus, spectators can use the Wi-Fi as well, making it quicker and easier to send images from the meet.
The SDN Communications Wi-Fi trailer is 8 feet long and packed with networking gear to provide internet on the go. Connecting the trailer directly to SDN’s 50,000-mile fiber network gives it enough capacity to service events of all sizes.
The trailer, which was recently re-wrapped to feature SDN member companies, is loaned to member companies for events, as well as to customers like PREMIER Bank. It’s been used for a variety of events, including the South Dakota Rock & Roll Music Association Battle of the Bands, the Brookings Summer Arts Festival, Quarry Days in Dell Rapids and events hosted by the Boy Scouts.
“We can set it up just like your home network. It’s a good solution for a lot of different events,” says Ryan Jackovich, network operations technician. “It’s fast free Wi-Fi right at the event.”
Duncan English, managed services data technician, said SDN spent the past winter upgrading the equipment in the trailer. “We’re always trying to make it better for everybody,” he says. “This year we added another access point to get us some more users. And we’ve made it a lot simpler now. It’s basically plug and play.”
Jackovich said member companies utilize the trailer frequently and it’s just one way for SDN to help out.
“There’s no profit in it … we don’t see the services. It’s just giving back to the communities," he said.
Halvorson says having access to the trailer has been a great benefit for the track and field events. It’s made running the meets easier, which allows the focus to be on the competitors and not technical issues.
“It’s a great benefit to be able to use this trailer,” Halvorson says. “It’s made a big difference.”
