Easy wireless connection at railway stations

Prague, 14 October 2014. Students, teachers and scholars can now connect to the Internet via the eduroam service at the Main Railway Stations in Prague and Pardubice. The list of locations will expand to Masarykovo Station in Prague within a few weeks. It will be enabled by a joint project of the CESNET association and ČD – Telematika, which is launching a pilot operation of its WiFi Free service at the stations mentioned above. It is through this service that CESNET will expand the existing coverage with the eduroam roaming infrastructure, the domestic part of which it runs, with three major transport hubs.

“This will be a pilot operation, providing us with an idea of the user interest in this type of locations, and providing ČD – Telematika with a suitable load for testing the newly built infrastructure,” says Ing. Jan Růžička of CESNET. After the evaluation of the pilot operation at these major railway stations, it is likely that the eduroam service will expand to other stations and transport hubs.

At present, the coverage with the eduroam service in the Czech Republic consists of 652 connection points, and users can connect just as easily in almost 5000 institutions in 69 countries around the world. Wireless Internet connection is thus just as easy on the move as it is at your school or other organisation, and a single set of login data is required. This concept has expanded to the current BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend, where students and teachers alike commonly access networks using their own notebooks, tablets and smartphones.

CESNET belongs among the pioneers and initiators of this concept of network access and has long been motivating other organisations to expand the infrastructure at the national level. By joining the eduroam infrastructure, an organisation obtains a simple user authentication system and a reciprocal possibility for users to connect worldwide.

For more information, please visit: www.eduroam.cz

The CESNET Association was founded by Czech universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in 1996. It is engaged in research and development in information and communication technologies and builds and develops the CESNET national e-infrastructure for research and education. With its research activities and accomplishments, CESNET represents the Czech Republic in international projects, most notably the pan-European GÉANT network building project and grid projects (EGI.eu), and participates actively in their implementation.

ČD – Telematika, a. s., offers comprehensive solutions and services in telecommunications, computer science and telematics. It operates the second largest ICT infrastructure in the Czech Republic, a central data repository, server farms and development and servicing sites. Besides Czech Railways, its major customers include numerous telecommunications operators, the operator of the academic network CESNET and state administration bodies. For more information, please visit: www.cdt.cz

Last change: 15.10.2014