Free unlimited wifi to be available at all Dubai airports

Free unlimited wifi will now be available for passengers at both of Dubai’s airports – Dubai International and Dubai World Central, operator Dubai Airports confirmed on Sunday.

The launch of the new one-click connection service follows “extensive research into passenger expectations”, a statement said.

Following the research, “huge efforts” were undertaken to upgrade airport wifi infrastructure. A four-month pilot project was also launched at Concourse D in July earlier this year.

“When our passengers arrive in Dubai after a long journey, they now expect to keep in touch with friends and family all over the world,” said Michael Ibbitson, executive vice president of Business Technology at Dubai Airports.

“To enable this, Dubai Airports has invested heavily in developing a state of the art infrastructure to deliver industry leading wifi capability.”

To ensure the speed and reliability of the new service, Dubai Airports is currently investing in over 6,000 new wifi access points to upgrade the entire wireless network infrastructure across both airports.

It has also enhanced the internet links to over 5Gbps to provide the required bandwidth capacity, sufficient to power a small city, the statement said.

New web applications have also been specially developed for each terminal and concourse to improve information for passengers.

The world’s busiest airport for international passenger traffic, Dubai International is expected to welcome around 83 million passengers this year.

Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths has said he expects 90 million passengers to pass through Dubai International Airport by the end of 2017.

Read: Dubai airport aims for 90 million passengers in 2017

The airport is now on course to handle 118 million passengers by 2023 while DWC’s existing passenger terminal building is being expanded to handle 26 million by the end of next year.

Both are precursors to the over $30bn DWC phase 2 project that will accommodate 120 million passengers by 2025 at which time the plan is for it to become Emirates’ new hub.