Costas Demetriou, CEO, Wifinity
Wifinity has been a proud provider of MOD estate wide internet connectivity solutions for the military since 2008. The Wifinity team understands how connectivity empowers and transforms lives. Nowhere is this clearer than in helping the Armed Forces to improve the lived experience and aid retention rates for military personnel serving with the Royal Navy, British Army and the Royal Air Force.
We know that we are trusted to operate in unique conditions and have committed to continuously invest in service improvements and upgrades, as an integral part of the live, work, train and deploy environments. We understand the challenges of accessing and maintaining connectivity services at military establishments, and our service improvement and upgrade programme is made in full consultation with the MOD, to make a positive difference to those who serve. This is enabled by a structured programme to attend 150+ military locations and speak to local commanders.
Wifinity was founded with the purpose of providing high-performance, reliable connectivity for those living within single living accommodation often in remote locations, where conventional home broadband is not a solution. We offer the same benefits as traditional broadband, such as super-fast speeds, but have removed barriers use like long contracts, so that customers only pay for what they need.
This year we have continued to hone our military offer including faster speeds; the capacity to connect more devices; more places where service personnel can use our service; and a new feature built to allow for leave or overseas deployment where accounts can be easily paused and restarted.
We have also added more coverage. New barracks and stations where there were previously limited choices of service provider are now connected to Wifinity, alongside upgrades for existing sites. Along with new account features, our goal is to deliver unfiltered internet connectivity wherever the service takes our users.
More Coverage, at More Establishments
Connectivity always ranks highly when any consumer is asked what they want at a venue. When we are connected to the things that are important to us, we feel at home.
Wifinity has structured our strategic plan, investing millions of pounds to deliver WiFi to as many MOD bed spaces, new blocks, and communal areas as possible. We work with local commanders to understand troop movement, recruit intake, and site development, so service personnel can get online where needed. This includes both on and off-base. Our subscriptions have been designed to roam to more than 150 MOD sites in the UK.
Predictable High-Performance Service
Our efforts are focused on delivering a consistently excellent service across military establishments. Improvements already this year include standardised WiFi packages, with up to 1Gb/s available across the MOD estate, which is good news for users that want extra oomph for gaming and streaming. There are no data limits on any of our subscriptions.
To support personnel concentration and movement, our rollout and upgrade schedule aims to bring high-performance WiFi to areas that match the MOD’s own building and redevelopment programme. In 2023, we upgraded our services in over 12,000 bedspaces and plan to deliver a further 11,000 bedspaces throughout 2024.
In addition to our upgrades, we will be installing new services in 9,000 bed spaces this year. Brand new Wifinity services have gone live at MRTC Bassingbourn and DMS Whittington Glencorse Barracks and HMS Nelson.
Built for Flexibility
We know that military life is dynamic. Changes happen quickly. Service personnel can use their accounts on more than 150 MOD bases around the country. But, in case of periods of absence, a new feature allows them to call us to pause their Wifinity subscriptions.
Say the account holder is posted to Estonia or Cyprus or has unplanned time out, our customer service team can put their account on ice. This means that service personnel do not pay for time on overseas deployment or leave, can easily restart their service, and get online when they return. Because we have designed and built the service for the Armed Services, we have removed the need for long contracts.
Building for the Future
While we provide internet access in barracks and communal areas now (it has been exciting to put esports suites in place at several military establishments), there is massive potential to easily extend the on-site infrastructure to support wider base facilities and operations.
Our network can scale to add capacity as needs develop. Extending it could support digital transformation in support functions where there is a need for reliable and secure connectivity.
Growing our Team to Support You
It is a priority for us to align ourselves with our customers. With 14 ex-Services veterans and one current reservist, we actively build our team to support this unique environment. We have pledged to support our defence communities as part of the Armed Forces Covenant and are honoured to hold the Silver Award.
Our approach includes a dedicated relationship management function so that we can reflect the requirements of individual bases as we plan our improvement program. We are proud of the upgrades we have made already this year, and to have maintained our 4.7-star Trustpilot rating (with over 4.3k of 5-star reviews).
Our wider programme of new products and added-value services will be rolled out over the rest of 2024. All of them, purpose-built for the Armed Forces community.
To find out more about our WiFi service for the defence community.