PopUp WiFi was an excellent accident that happened in 2014. The three of us (Andrew Davies, Linden Kurth and Nina McMahon) founded our company Elan Projects in 2013 in Hobart, Tasmania. Our skills and qualifications are in network engineering, hardware, hospitality, people, brand management, and renewable energies. We managed projects that focused on regional and community development, always with a technological twist, usually with an events component.

In 2014, we were bidding for an events-based government project in a regional part of Tassie. The brief called for participants to engage in an online polling activity, but there was no robust, affordable event WiFi solution available for a group of around 200 users. We searched the globe for the right solution and couldn’t find one that met the all our requirements. Fortunately, Linden and Andrew had the skills to build our own multi-carrier cellular solutions. The guys built our first prototype and away we went.

The first PopUp WiFi unit was 6’ tall and took two people to load it into a truck! Now our smallest model, the Lite unit is the size of a decent lunchbox and has many, many times the amount of power and managability of that first giant version. Our current range has been used to connect everything from annual school fundraisers and conferences with a few hundred attendees, to supporting crazy jobs like streaming a SpaceX launch, supporting a national presidential election and broadcasting major rodeos to television. One thing we’ve learned is no matter the size and type of job, there are always producers. We love producers and it is our honour to serve them and the vital work they do to invigorate communities in so many diverse ways..