Pairi Daiza’s Edenya gets 100 new antennas for a perfect mobile coverage

This year, Pairi Daiza opened Edenya: an impressive tropical world beneath an enormous glass roof complete with caves, rare plants, gigantic basins filled with sharks, sturgeons and manatees, a vibrant jungle, and a sunlit terrace, making it the world’s largest indoor tropical garden. Together with Circet, their construction partner, Proximus NXT played a crucial role behind the scenes in ensuring that visitors could enjoy a stable mobile network by Proximus inside, as is already the case in the rest of this impressive park.

A solid partnership between Proximus and Pairi Daiza

For Proximus, providing customers with optimal coverage and capacity is an absolute priority. Even within a challenging environment such as Edenya, Proximus wants to guarantee the best mobile user experience.

Thanks to their strong partnership with Pairi Daiza, Proximus NXT and Circet have successfully deployed a mobile network in various areas of the park where connectivity can be challenging. This way, visitors have access to a reliable connection wherever they are, regardless of any architectural constraints.

A network designed for a tropical world

For Circet site engineers Tom Schrey and Dimitri Claesen, Edenya was anything but a normal construction site. The structure is complex, the architecture unique, and the aesthetic demands considerably high. Yet, the team seamlessly succeeded in bringing the public network inside. Nowadays, new buildings are so well isolated that mobile signals are barely able to penetrate, which means Edenya had to be equipped with around 100 carefully installed indoor antennae.

Because Proximus NXT was already involved from the first design plans, in collaboration with their construction partner Circet, the team was able to brainstorm on the technical feasibility and the integration of the design. And this was no luxury: in a space filled with caves, rock structures, aquariums, and an expansive hall of 200 by 200 meters, applying changes after the fact is nearly impossible. Furthermore, visitors were not allowed to see any cables or antennae. Everything had to be invisible and subtly tucked away.

Where technique and experience come together

The biggest challenge? The construction site itself. In Edenya, various parties were working at the same time, which meant that planning and timing were constantly shifting. The team had to be flexible, work in phases, and sometimes wait for other teams to finish. On a technical level too, the project demanded atypical solutions and antennae which perfectly fit the tropical vibe.

Edenya is a special project for Proximus NXT and Circet. Not only because of its global exposure, but especially because it shows the technical possibilities in one of the most challenging indoor environments you can imagine. Pairi Daiza receives visitors from across the globe, who expect a reliable mobile network wherever they go. Even in a tropical garden with subterranean caves, rocks and aquariums.

The project underlines the expertise provided by Proximus NXT and its construction partner, Circet, when it comes to complex infrastructure, and proves that high-grade mobile connectivity by Proximus can also be seamlessly integrated within some of the most creative and architectural environments. As Tom and Dimitri summarize it: “If you can build a good network in here, you can do it anywhere.”