XLN, a provider of phone, broadband, energy and card processing services to more than 100,000 British small businesses, launched its public Wi-Fi service in September 2016. XLN supplies one in ten high street shops, one in seven hairdressers and one in ten restaurants in the UK.
In May 2017 the carrier announced that rapid expansion of the network has continued since it was launched in October 2016, driven by customer demand and growing end-user adoption. In April 2017, XLN also announced support for inbound roaming across the network, making it even easier for customers to connect. It has now passed the milestone of 20,000 public hotspots and the service has seen more than a million users.
More small businesses continue to join the network. It’s an innovative service that gives independent traders a secure way of providing free Wi-Fi without resorting to shared passwords or expensive custom solutions. It also gives them a way to compete with larger, corporate chains.
GlobalReach Wi-Fi AAA and captive portal platform
The XLN service is supported by technology from GlobalReach Technology and BSG Wireless. The companies provide the infrastructure making rapid expansion possible.
The GlobalReach AAA RADIUS and captive portal management platform delivers and manages the Wi-Fi network, with BSG Wireless providing its industry-renowned roaming hub. The technology provides XLN with a carrier-grade, community Wi-Fi network to offer multiple-tiered services to business customers and guests.
Including RADIUS / AAA and custom captive portal as standard, the single, central GlobalReach platform has been integrated with XLN’s existing infrastructure and supports enhanced Wi-Fi features including roaming, Passpoint and analytics, allowing XLN to tailor its services for future developments.
The platform can scale infinitely and is proven to support billions of authentications over any device. This makes it easy for XLN to connect with more business customers as the network expands. GlobalReach also includes an easy-to-use reporting interface to collect and view rich, real-time and historical data to support network operations and customer insight.
Key Highlights
- Launched September 2016
- A free public Wi-Fi service for all XLN business broadband customers
- 20,000 UK public hotspots (May 2017)
- One million+ end users since launch (May 2017)
CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
“We’re going to create the single biggest small business Wi-Fi network in the UK, and we’re going to Wi-Fi enable every British high street, it’s as simple as that. This will give customers more reasons to choose small, independent businesses over corporate giants, and that means more support for independent high streets as a whole. For anyone that cares about their local high street, this is massive.”
XLN Founder and CEO Christian Nellemann
“By leveraging our network scale and partner expertise we’ve gone from nowhere in October last year to running one of the biggest public Wi-Fi networks in the country. Adding dedicated inbound roaming features to the service only strengthens the proposition by making it even easier for our customers’ customers to connect.”
Andreas Bartels, Head of Wi-Fi, XLN