41 million passengers travel through the Sydney Airport each year, making it one of the most important pieces of infrastructure and an essential part of Australia’s transport network. Keeping everyone connected, from the security personnel to airfield operations at Australia’s busiest airport requires a reliable, yet flexible integrated communications system. Since 2005, Zetron’s ACOM system has helped make sure travellers arrive safely and on-time to their destinations, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
World-Class Airport Experience
After years of operating with no major upgrades, the Sydney Airport set out to construct a brand new Integrated Operations Centre (IOC). With that came the need for a new Integrated Communications system. Although the current ACOM system proved to be just as reliable as it was over a decade ago, in order to integrate with the current digital services, the time came to upgrade.
After identifying their core requirements in the new system including, enhanced telephony functions, SIP telephony integration, console functionality on tablet PCs and an IP architecture, they began evaluating different systems.
Don’t Change a Winning Team
Being accustom to the reliability and flexibility of the ACOM system, they found without question, Zetron and its resilient architecture, dedicated service and competitive bid was the clear winner. Not only could the new ACOM system meet their requirements, it allowed for a smooth migration thanks to its ability to keep the ACOM system fully functional during the migration period.
Keeping the ACOM system running was achieved with a temporary CSG (Conventional Services Gateway) from Zetron to facilitate both the new and old ACOM systems and retaining access to the shared radio resources. This allowed personnel to keep both systems fully functional for a period of time after migrating and the option to roll back to the old control centre if they needed to.
The Future is Digital
With its unmatched reliability and flexibility, the new COTS server based ACOM system gave the Sydney Airport the capacity to scale in the future and peace of mind it would last for years to come. Now they’re more likely to migrate to a new digital radio platform in the future knowing it can easily be migrated.
With the addition of improved overall coverage, the new ACOM system helped achieve their goal of greater automation in terminal operations as well, while still being compatible with other agencies across the state.
Training Day
As the new Integrated Operations Centre was up and running along with the new ACOM command-and-control system, the next phase was training. In order for everyone to get up to speed on all the new equipment, the train the trainer proved to be the quickest and easiest approach as well as allowing the operators to provide additional input on their GUI requirements at the same time, saving time and resources.
Located only eight kilometres from the city centre, Sydney Airport connects to more than 90 destinations worldwide. These connections rely on a resilient, fully redundant system to keep things moving safely. And with Zetron’s ACOM command and control system, operators, as well as passengers from around the world can count on the Sydney Airport to help them reach their destinations.
“We were incredibly thrilled to continue our relationship with Sydney Airports Corporation Ltd and contribute to their vision to deliver a world-class airport experience,” said Ranjan Bhagat, vice president and general manager of Zetron Australasia. “Everyone’s happy with how the project turned out and we’re looking forward to serving them for years to come.”