Case Study: Northumberland County Council achieves secure, reliable public Wi‑Fi for 500,000 visitors with Fortinet

Secure Wi-Fi Is Plain Sailing for Tall Ships Regatta

Northumberland County Council (NCC) partnered with the North Sea Tall Ships Regatta to provide public services for the 2016 event in Blyth, aiming to give visitors easy, secure internet access across the town. Building on a prior street‑level Wi‑Fi trial, NCC faced the challenge of rapidly extending coverage over a much larger area to support an unknown—and ultimately very large—number of simultaneous users while preventing misuse and avoiding service outages.

Reseller KBR implemented a Fortinet solution of 58 OAP832e outdoor access points with Air Traffic Control™ for seamless handoffs and a FortiGate‑1500D firewall backed by FortiGuard threat intelligence for web filtering and unified policy management. The deployment delivered 6 km of continuous coverage, supported the event’s social‑media activity with no reported interruptions for an estimated 500,000 visitors, and left a reusable infrastructure legacy for future public‑Wi‑Fi and digital inclusion projects.

Northumberland County Council

Dave McDonnell

Network and Communications Manager