Case Study: Município de Melgaço achieves seamless high‑capacity public WiFi for 10,000 visitors across 25,000 m² with Cisco Meraki

How a national event went from no WiFi to seamless coverage for area over 25k meters

Município de Melgaço faced a recurring problem: its nationally recognized Feast of Alvarinho and Fumeiro Melgaço drew thousands of visitors to a heavily wooded, 25,000 m² outdoor site with no prior public WiFi, leaving attendees dependent on oversaturated cellular networks. To deliver reliable connectivity for visitors and staff, the municipality worked with Cisco Meraki to deploy outdoor access points and a managed wireless solution for the event.

Cisco Meraki deployed ruggedized outdoor APs and used the Meraki dashboard to configure RF optimization, 15 segmented SSIDs, Layer 7 traffic shaping, Layer 3 rules, a public splash page, and AD authentication for staff. The solution delivered robust coverage for about 10,000 users over the three-day event with no downtime, provided real‑time visibility and automatic usage reports (hourly counts and popular apps), improved attendee experience, and now allows the IT team to repurpose the APs for ongoing public WiFi in town.

Município de Melgaço

Paulo Cardoso

Head of Municipality of Informatics