How Frankfurt Airport put Auracast on its gates without rewiring

On 28 January 2026, Fraport announced that Frankfurt Airport had started broadcasting gate announcements over Auracast at gates A16 and A17 in Terminal 1. Fraport and GN both described it as the first airport in the world to do so. The interesting part is not that it was first, but how little had to be built to get there.

What was installed

Nothing new, in the sense that matters. Sittig Technologies, the Frankfurt company that makes the airport's gate paging equipment, built Auracast transmitters into its PAXModular IP paging stations, the microphone stations already sitting at the gates. Sittig's PAXGuide software, which plays the automated announcements, also got an Auracast module. Fraport's release says this needed no major rebuilding and no additional hardware.

The result is that both kinds of gate call go out over Auracast: the ones staff read into the microphone, and the pre-recorded boarding and change announcements PAXGuide plays automatically.

The project is led by Sittig with Fraport and Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, under the name "Barrierefreie digitale Passagieransagen" (accessible digital passenger announcements). The state of Hesse is funding it with about €245,500 through its Distr@l programme. GN, Google, Samsung and the Bluetooth SIG are technology partners.

Why the PA chain is the right place for it

Most Auracast installs so far are a transmitter fed from a mixing desk in a single room. An airport gate is different: announcements come from several sources, change constantly, and only matter to the people at that gate. Putting the transmitter inside the paging station solves three problems at once.

• Coverage follows the gate zone. The broadcast comes from the same point as the gate's own announcements, so it covers the seating area where people are waiting for that flight. Notebookcheck reported in May that the signal also reaches neighbouring gates.
• No new cabling. The paging stations are already networked and powered. Adding a module to them avoids running audio feeds to a separate transmitter at every gate, which is usually the expensive part of any airport audio job.
• Every announcement goes out, automatically. Because the transmitter sits after both the microphone and the automated system, nobody has to remember to switch anything on. Hearing-aid users get the same calls as everyone else, directly in their ears, without the reverberation of a terminal PA.

How passengers join

Compatible hearing aids, earbuds, headphones and assistive listening receivers can pick up the broadcast directly. GN named recent Pixel and Samsung phones and its own hearing-aid app as ways to select it. Our guide to joining a broadcast has the steps for each platform, and our Frankfurt venue page has the current detail.

Trial, extension, and what has not been announced

The trial was planned to run for two months, with feedback gathered from passengers and staff. The university's telecommunications networks group is measuring audio quality using Mean Opinion Score ratings. Notebookcheck reported on 6 May that the test had been extended, without a new end date. No results have been published.

Nor has any wider rollout. None of the sources we found mention other gates or terminals at Frankfurt, and we have seen no confirmation of claims that the system has been extended to Terminal 3. Sittig says only that the setup makes future expansion simple.

The approach has travelled, though. On 14 July 2026, Sittig started a pilot at six gates at Munich Airport, which it says builds on its experience at Frankfurt.