Reporting at light speed as HSV becomes world’s first football club to use LiFi

Eindhoven, the Netherlands – Journalists in the press center at the Volkspark stadium - home to Hamburg football club HSV Fußball AG - are the first to file their stories using an innovative new means of wireless communication. This is because Signify (Euronext: LIGHT), the world leader in lighting, has installed LiFi in the stadium press center. The system, called Trulifi, provides journalists with a highly reliable, secure and fast Internet connection through the room’s ceiling lights. HSV is the first football club in the world to install the groundbreaking technology which uses light waves instead of radio waves to provide an Internet connection.

New stadium of light

The Volkspark stadium, which opened in 2000, has a capacity of 57,000 and is one of 10 stadiums that will host the European football tournament in Germany in 2024. It is also certified to host other top international tournament matches. Like many stadiums, the wireless signal in its busy press center was prone to overload due to journalists accessing the network and interference from mobile devices of fans, staff and officials, all pinging the wireless router.

Signify installed 84 Philips PowerBalance gen2 LED recessed luminaires in the stadium’s press center. Eight of the luminaires have an integrated Trulifi 6002 transceiver, which modulates infrared light waves to provide an Internet connection of up to 150 megabits per second (Mbps). Journalists using the system receive a USB Access Key, which plugs into their laptop. This picks up the LiFi signal and transmits data back to the luminaire. The LiFi system is free from interference and encrypted. Also, an extra layer of security is built-in as light waves cannot pass through walls.
 

LiFi: World first for a football club

“We opted for LiFi given the increasing demand for bandwidth from journalists using our press center. For them a reliable wireless connection is everything. Now they have good quality light to write their stories along with a reliable, fast and highly secure wireless connection,” said Daniel Nolte, segment leader area organization & infrastructure at HSV.
 

Signify has a range of commercial Trulifi systems to satisfy different market segments. It also includes Trulifi 6013, which uses colored light to create a robust, secure fixed point-to-point connection with a speed up to 250 Mbps.
 

Trulifi underlines Signify’s leadership in leveraging lighting infrastructure to unlock the potential of light in new high-growth segments with LED technology that’s not only innovative but energy efficient.