G-20 Summit Going To Pittsburgh This Fall

The Sports and Exhibition Authority (SEA) of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County has awarded Smart City Networks a three-year contract to provide event technology services to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, PA. In providing services (including telecommunications, Internet, networking, data services, and Wi-Fi™), Smart City Networks will be performing upgrades to increase the network backbone capacity by tenfold and expand the Wi-Fi™ network.

The David L. Lawrence Convention Center is the site of the G-20 Global Economic Summit this September.
The David L. Lawrence Convention Center is the site of the G-20 Global Economic Summit this September.

The David L. Lawrence Convention Center, managed by SMG, will be the site of the G-20 Global Economic Summit this September. Smart City Networks, which has corporate headquarters in Las Vegas, NV and Lake Buena Vista, FL, is working with officials at the convention center to determine the event’s technology needs that will host some 4,000 delegates and 2,500 domestic and foreign members of the media.

In addition to full telephone services for the center’s 2,000 phone lines, Smart City Networks offers high-speed Internet access using Ethernet protocols. Network service professionals offer turnkey data networking services including local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs) and private networks. Smart City Networks also provides an entry level wireless service for Web surfing and checking e-mail which can be accessed by using a Wi-Fi™-compatible network card. The wireless network offers Internet access of up to 256k of bandwidth.

“Smart City Networks has extensive experience in providing superior telecommunications services for high-profile events across the county,” said Mark Haley, president of Smart City Networks. “We’re honored that the SEA approved our contract and look forward to working with the David L. Lawrence Convention Center on all types of upcoming events, including the G-20 Summit. We will ensure all of the attendees and personnel at this global event have the world-class Internet and telecommunications connectivity they need.”Smart City Networks provides services to more than 5,000 trade shows at more than 40 convention centers throughout the U.S.

Smart City Networks has provided telecommunications services for various large-scale national and international events, including the G8 Summit as well as Republican and Democratic National Conventions. (Read FacilityBlog’s coverage of last fall’s Conventions.)

“Over the years, Smart City Networks has provided us with excellent customer service as well as a distinctive program of data, telecom and technical services that we will continue to rely upon in the upcoming years, especially as we welcome world finance leaders at the G-20 Summit in September,” said Mark Leahy, SMG general manager of the Convention Center.