Cisco Cisco Prime LAN Management Solution 4.2 Information Guide

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Challenge
Transport for London (TfL) was created in 2000 as an integrated body responsible for 
transport system across the city. Its main role is to implement the Mayor of London’s 
transport strategy and manage transport services across the capital. These services 
include London’s buses, the London Underground, Docklands Light Railway, London 
Overground, Tramlink, London River Services, Victoria Coach Station and five percent 
of London’s strategic road network. TfL faced a significant challenge in 2012, when 
London hosted the Olympic Games. 
It was clear from the outset that London’s transport system would be under 
considerable stress, which led authorities to think carefully, not just about how to 
adjust existing travel patterns, but also how to get timely information more easily 
into the hands of visitors. One obvious way of helping to achieve this, as well as 
supporting a London transport strategy proposal to provide better information, was 
to introduce wireless networking in underground stations. 
“We needed to put more information in the hands of our customer service agents, 
or CSAs, to make sure they could enhance the journey of the travelling public,” says 
Steve Townsend, chief information officer at Transport for London. 
At the same time, the introduction of Wi-Fi was seen as an opportunity to help 
consolidate and streamline existing communications links across the organization, 
some of which were suffering from latency and resilience problems. 
“We have a number of data transmission networks within Transport for London, and 
by providing a new core, we took the opportunity to improve efficiency and reduce 
operational cost,” Townsend says. “What Wi-Fi gave us was a standard way of serving 
data to those environments in a much faster, more state-of-the-art fashion.”
Customer Case Study
Wi-Fi supports digital Olympic Games and helps travelers stay connected in more than 120 London 
Underground stations
Customer Name: 
Transport for London
Industry: 
Public sector
Location: 
United Kingdom
Number of Employees: 
27,000
Challenge
• Support mayoral transport strategy to 
help London’s transport systems keep 
pace with the world’s best
• Make internal operational teams better 
informed and more efficient
Solution
• Service provided by Cisco included 
provison and design of high-user-
density wireless network
Results
• Supported communications across 
critical stations during Olympic Games
• Helped deliver fuller, more timely travel 
information to London Underground staff 
and customers
• Contributed to network infrastructure 
consolidation and efficiency
© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. 
 
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