With community at the centre of its business model, Gravity Coliving listens, adapts, creates and grows with its residents. Each location is unique to the community living in it, as they create unique spaces tailored to the resident groups that live within the community. Their goal is to create flexible, convenient and empowering environments for their members to grow in. With its all-inclusive model for the tenant, Gravity wanted a technology partner that could support all the integrated smart living IoT’s, its promise of high-speed WiFi, and comfortable, connected communal spaces. With 20 years of experience in the real estate industry, Wifirst can help our clients go in any direction they want to go.
Gravity chose Wifirst as their technology partner to provide WiFi, Fibre and other managed services to its 97 studio apartments and coworking areas at the height of the pandemic. With opening day closely around the corner, Wifirst had only just a few weeks to install the infrastructure, which was based on the use of 100% passive equipment, deploying a dedicated fibre line to the entire building.
Thanks to the use of the passive equipment, Wifirst accelerated the deployment process of the new WiFi infrastructure by reducing its activation process by 6 weeks. Indeed, by assessing that the cabling infrastructure was reusable, Wifirst commits to maintaining and reusing the cabling throughout the entire duration of the contract.
This also reduces heavily the disturbance and noise in deploying new cables, avoiding drilling, and engineers going back and forth between the floors, which can sometimes be difficult for the residents. Reusing and assessing an old infrastructure means we give a second youth to old cabling and reduce prices and carbon emissions/footprint by creating a 0 waste WiFi pillar. All cables/cabinets/racks are reused as much as possible, making sure we pass at least the Cat5E certification from end to end. A small allowance envelope is added to cater for any surprise and, if possible, given back to the operator if not used.
Our solution means big savings for the operator and a healthy impact on the environment, creating less waste in the long term. For Wifirst, this also means we will have the ability to top up the existing service with new features and products, allowing Gravity to evolve their customer experience and scale it to all their properties. They are looking to add TV services, door lock systems, digital signage and more, all connected to our WiFi infrastructure.
In the near future, Wifirst will be providing the Hounslow project with digital signage and TVs, which will all be fully connected for easier and more accessible communication with their residents. Wifirst and Gravity have a very bright future together, with 3 new projects already in the pipeline.
Robert Birch
Head of Operations, Gravity Coliving
A leader in innovative WiFi and Fibre connectivity solutions since 2002, Wifirst is trusted by thousands of customers across Europe to provide high-quality, robust networks.
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Wifirst - The HKX Building
3 Pancras Square, London, N1C 4AG
