(Smith Lake Park/Facebook)
CULLMAN, Alabama – Starting with the 2024 TNT Fireworks Bassmaster Elite Tournament and Festival, June 27-30, all guests, vendors and anglers visiting Smith Lake Park will be able to connect to free Wi-Fi provided by Sprout Fiber Internet. Over the past few months, Cullman County Tourism has worked with the Sprout team at the park and Cullman Electric Cooperative to create a custom fiber-to-the-premises (FTTX) solution with enough bandwidth to support Wi-Fi at large community events, such as the Bassmaster Elite Series, which provided live coverage of the event.
Cullman County Tourism Director Jeff Tolbert had this to say about the partnership: “Our agency is focused on providing the best experience possible for both tourists and locals, and providing quality Wi-Fi at events and festivals is essential to attracting partners like Bassmaster to Cullman County. (Last weekend’s) event marked the first time a Bassmaster Elite Series event was held on Smith Lake, and Sprouts did a great job preparing to provide high-quality internet for such a prestigious event. We can’t wait to see what happens for our anglers, and we have no doubt our guests will love the park, the lake and Cullman County as a whole.”
Mark Freeman, Sprout’s vice president of network operations, added about providing fiber optic internet and a robust Wi-Fi solution to portions of Smith Lake Park: “Because we had a large area to cover with Wi-Fi, we utilized different types of technology to extend the Wi-Fi from our main office to the boat ramp, as well as provide multi-gig Ethernet connectivity to the field for our event vendors. We selected powerful 60GHz PtP radios to extend Sprout service to multiple poles around the boating venue, from which we provided Wi-Fi for the event with various Wi-Fi SSIDs and secure access to free public Wi-Fi, as well as separate staff and vendor networks. It was a very unique configuration that met a specific need, and it was fun to build.”
