If you’re a business looking for a short term WiFi solution, finding a trustworthy provider that won’t tie you into a long term contract, or insist on lengthy cancellation terms can be a powerful business enabler.
With the internet becoming the lifeblood of our existence, short term WiFi requirements have risen over the past couple of decades, and there are now a healthy range of options open to businesses.
We can now get excellent WiFi for a day, a week, or longer – and enjoy enterprise connectivity at short lead times.
In this article we cover the different short term WiFi solutions that are available for businesses, highlighting their use cases along with considerations on how best to use them.
What’s important is to remember that the best short term WiFi solutions are agile,offering you the flexibility to extend your WiFi hire period, or cancel it without stressful contractual obligations.
Different types of short term WiFi solution
1. WiFi for temporary office locations.
Industries like construction, media, transportation and retail often have temporary office locations that require connectivity to perform normal business operations (sometimes termed as BAU).
The temporary office location could be live for a few days, weeks or months. For example during a construction project, throughout a TV production requiring live streaming or data transfer to editing studios, or for a pop-up retail store, a promotional tour or even just a remote worker that needs business-grade connectivity.
The challenge for temporary office locations is to ensure that your WiFi network will support the requirements of your employees, providing reliable connectivity and offering the data bandwidth required for your type of work.
Larger volumes of data transfer with streaming of production services for example will need careful consideration to ensure adequate bandwidth.
A remote worker accessing online systems for their role could purchase a Starlink to carry around with them, but there are pros and cons of Starlink when using them for both your internet and your WiFi connection.
When used to support an office with multiple users and devices connecting, you may require a professional to build you a WiFi network that will seamlessly allow all devices to connect and transfer data simultaneously.
Using Starlink as your internet connection with a professional WiFi network that is designed to allow your office workers to seamlessly connect could be a cost-effective solution for you, and good WiFi providers can offer an end-to-end solution for short term office requirements.
2. Temporary Internet when moving offices
If you’re moving to a new permanent office site, you’re best to opt for a fixed fibre to your office. This gives you a dedicated and reliable internet supply, on which a robust WiFi network can be built to allow users to connect.
However, fixed fibre providers can take up to 90 days to install your fibre, so it’s not a quick turnaround.
Temporary internet solutions including Starlink (Satellite) or 4G/5G (LTE) or sometimes even piggybacking off another fibre connection nearby to bring in the internet can be used to tide you over.
Coupled with a temporary WiFi network, a fully customised and pre-configured solution can be installed quickly and painlessly, giving you a powerful connectivity solution until your fibre installation date.
With flexible contracts available, you have the ability to extend your hire if your installation date gets moved.
3. WiFi for events
You may be running a festival, sporting competition, corporate day or sales event that requires connectivity. We’re noticing exclusive brands such as the Pig hotel chain and Soho House starting up their own events, which are proving to be not only a revenue generator but a great marketing tool for businesses.
For this requirement, there are companies that specialise in WiFi for events, connecting indoor and outdoor venues to build temporary WiFi networks on any event site. Event WiFi solutions give you the ability to connect your production team, take payments, stream content and more access online systems for anything from a day to a week or longer.
They require experience, particularly in outdoor venues, as WiFi for outdoor events is a different skillset to that required for WiFi for indoor events.
But regardless of skillsets required, short term WiFi solutions are available for both.
4. WiFi for promotional tours
You may be launching a new brand, promoting a business, travelling the UK with a production or visiting customers. Any roaming tour will need to have connectivity on the go.
Fortunately nowadays we’re not at the mercy of tethering from our mobile phones. Whilst this is still a good backup option to have, not all areas are covered with adequate mobile signal. For businesses that rely on being online, a professional WiFi solution, suitable for roaming, is recommended.
Mobile, or roaming, WiFi solutions can move with your team, delivering continuous connectivity. Once devices are connected, they will stay connected providing they are in range of your WiFi network, and often the solution can be bundled into a small flight-case that’s easily transportable. Starlinks can also be a good option over LTE here. Once your requirements and locations are known then an audit can calculate your best option. WiFi providers can do this for you.
There are some neat additions here to just WiFi too. Promotional tours, their very nature of being a sales and marketing function, are often a great opportunity to gather data. With a captive portal, you can collect email addresses and intelligence in return for access to online vouchers, content or just WiFi.
Your WiFi can start to earn you a better ROI from your promotional tour, becoming a data gathering strategy rather than just an overhead.
Short term WiFi considerations
As with all WiFi networks, if they are left open, then they can be subject to over-use. If you are in a busy area, for example in the centre of a town with a sales promotion, then you won’t want other people connecting to your network as this could cause contention, causing you connectivity problems.
A password is one obvious solution, but these can be easily passed around, and in the world of IoT, unknown devices can connect which is a risk to the security of your business systems. It only takes one device to bring a harmful virus into your business and take down your whole operation.
The preferred method is to pre-authenticate devices on the WiFi system,only allowing those devices to connect to the network. The benefit of this is that there is no password required, giving users easy, instant access. You get full control of which devices can connect to your WiFi network, with the power to add new devices as required.
Optimal security, optimal ease for users and optimal connectivity are the rewards. You’ll need a temporary WiFi provider that can offer this pre-authenticated methodology.
Summary
There are many use cases and benefits of short term WiFi solutions. Getting your requirements down is a key factor in hiring the right solution for your needs. Consider what you need to use the WiFi network for, what devices you’ll need to connect, and the location of the service.
If you need any guidance, we’re happy to help. Just contact us.
