Cisco bids a wireless welcome to Covent Garden visitors

Cisco this week did its bit to try to make people feel more welcome in London by installing a wireless-enabled mat the size of a tennis court in Covent Garden.

On Monday, the company plans do the same thing in Festival Square, Edinburgh.

The mat, which provides free, secure wireless access to all passers-by in addition to a small covered-area for those that wish to sit down while they check e-mails or surf the web, will stay in situ for two weeks.

Provided in partnership with BT and large enough to be visible from Google Earth, the welcome mat is part of Cisco's 'Power of the Human Network' campaign.

"This campaign is based on the fundamental belief that when you connect people, you change things for the better," said Graham Vann, head of marketing and business development for Cisco in the UK and Ireland.

"Cisco has moved beyond routers and switches, spanning beyond the network into voice, video, security and storage. The network is the fabric that is making all of this happen. It is changing how we communicate, collaborate, entertain, and do business. As part of our 'Human Network' campaign, the 'Welcome Mats" are helping us to increase awareness of Cisco's role in the next chapter of this network evolution to both end-users and decision-makers alike."

Maggie Holland

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.