Devicescape’s UK Curated Virtual Network experiences 13x growth surge

San Bruno, Calif., February 24th, 2015 — Devicescape today announced that its Curated Virtual Network of amenity Wi-Fi hotspots in the United Kingdom has grown by a factor of 13 since it was commercially deployed in February 2014.

The UK CVN now numbers 215,000 locations, compared to less than 17,000 when Devicescape announced its first UK customer in February 2014. The addition of almost 200,000 UK locations in a 12-month period beat the company’s own growth expectations.

Such rapid growth reflects both the increasing availability of amenity Wi-Fi in popular public locations in the UK, and the unique, crowd-sourced network build-out approach Devicescape has developed.

Whenever a new amenity Wi-Fi location is discovered by a smartphone running the Devicescape client application, it is added to the list of hotspots the company monitors. Devicescape’s patented Curation process then validates the hotspot—checking for quality of experience, availability, and seamless authentication—and adds qualifying locations to the Curated Virtual Network.

“The UK is an innovative market for amenity Wi-Fi so we were expecting around 10x growth in the first year,” said Devicescape CEO Dave Fraser. “To get 13x growth in that timeframe is just fantastic and reflects the increasing pace of amenity Wi-Fi deployment. The beauty of the Curated Virtual Network is that growth accelerates as the number of deployed devices increases, building coverage and capacity in precisely the places that smartphone users need it most.”

The UK CVN contains numerous locations where users now routinely expect to find amenity Wi-Fi, such as coffee shops and restaurants. It also reflects the importance of amenity Wi-Fi to a growing range of consumer facing businesses. High street banks and leading pharmacies are among a new wave of businesses looking to Wi-Fi to improve their customer experience, following the example set by airports, sports arenas, gyms, museums, libraries and shopping malls across the country.

Venues with extremely high footfall also highlight the enormous public reach of amenity Wi-Fi, particularly compared with home-spot networks of domestic hotspots that typically see fewer than one visitor per day. The average Starbucks coffee shop has 432 visitors every day, and each of the 793 Starbucks UK locations is part of the CVN. Even cultural venues like the Royal Festival Hall on London’s iconic South Bank which had four million visitors during its 2012/2013 season, is now part of the UK CVN.

“Amenity Wi-Fi is now just as important a public connectivity resource as the cellular network, but neither in isolation can deliver a total connectivity experience” Fraser said. “Mobile operators need to show they are thinking about what we call Connectivity First, by connecting users to whichever resource is the most appropriate in the moment. This is one of the most effective ways in which operators of all types can improve the customer experience.”