Greggs and Marks & Spencer offer the best quality free Wi-Fi of the UK’s leading high street brands, according to a study released today by Wi-Fi experts Devicescape. But when brands are ranked according to a combination of the quality of their Wi-Fi and the ease with which it can be accessed, Boots and Asda take the top positions.
The report, ‘Making Connections: Wi-Fi on the UK High Street’, is the first in Devicescape’s new ‘Wi-Fi Intelligence’ research series. Devicescape set out to compile a list of the top high street brands for free Wi-Fi, taking into account quality, accessibility, and usage. Drawing on fully anonymised data from a sample of more than 100,000 Devicescape-enabled smartphones, Devicescape sampled the free Wi-Fi at a host of leading brand locations across the UK where those smartphones connected.
While free Wi-Fi might be associated most closely with coffee shops keen to attract nomadic workers, the report shows just how widespread and high quality Wi-Fi on the UK high street has in fact become.
Devicescape found that brands from the retail and ‘food on the go’ sectors offered the best quality Wi-Fi during the survey period, followed by restaurants, banks, and coffee shops.
“The real takeaway here is not that Greggs has better Wi-Fi than the next brand but that the quality of high street Wi-Fi in the UK is really very good across the board,” said Mike Hibberd, Director of Marketing, Devicescape. “At the very least the connectivity offered by the brands we’ve listed, and many more we have not, is good enough to stream video to a smartphone.”
As well as being among the leaders for quality, Marks & Spencer emerged as the most interconnected brand on the UK high street. More devices that connected to Marks & Spencer Wi-Fi during the survey period were found to have also connected to the Wi-Fi at other high street locations than was the case for any other brand.
“All of the brands featured in our study, and many more besides, should be saluted for offering quality, free Wi-Fi to their customers, particularly when you consider how difficult it can sometimes be to get the best from your cellular data connection in these locations,” said Hibberd. “And we should not overlook the fact that the same kind of connectivity is offered by numerous smaller or independent brands.”
Greggs already leads the way in mobile loyalty (not to mention sausage rolls) and Asda has demonstrated some smart augmented reality over the years with Halloween and Christmas promos.
To download the report visit www.devicescape.com
