Janet and The Cloud partner to deliver public access WiFi to Further and Higher Education sector

The Cloud approved as a public WiFi partner for the Further and Higher Education sector

St Albans, UK, 6-11-2013 — /EuropaWire/ — Janet, part of the Jisc group, the UK’s expert on digital technologies for research and education, has partnered with The Cloud, one of the UK’s leading public WiFi providers. The agreement will allow Further and Higher Education institutions connected to Janet to deliver public access WiFi to guests who wish to get online whilst on campus at Universities or Colleges across the UK. This service will run separately to student WiFi service in these institutions, enhancing the experience of guest lecturers, visitors, students’ families and prospective students by providing fast connectivity during their visit.

Janet serves over 18 million end-users in UK research and education. By partnering with The Cloud, Janet can offer universities and colleges significant savings by utilising existing infrastructure and by reducing management overhead and support costs. Educational establishments are increasingly used to holding events outside of regular term, such as guest lectures, conferences or corporate events, the ability to offer visitors WiFi is a commonly sought-after service. The solution offered by The Cloud not only takes care of all the regulatory requirements, but as a turnkey or “off-the-shelf” offering, it can be deployed quickly and allows institutions to scale WiFi capacity up or down with ease, making use of existing Janet infrastructure to cater for events which see an influx of visitors.

This partnership comes as the mobile device market continues to boom. Smartphone ownership is at an all-time high, with eMarketer stating 48% of the UK population now own a smartphone*. Smart devices and mobile internet in particular are becoming part of everyday life, and prospective students and external visitors are constantly connected and need to stay that way wherever they are. As such Janet is providing educational institutions with the tools to offer such connectivity.

“There’s a growing demand from our community for the ability to provide a public WiFi offering. This sentiment has been reiterated countless times.” explained Tim Marshall, Jisc Executive Director Technology and Infrastructure and divisional CEO Janet. “Being able to offer an externally managed end user WiFi service means our customers can provide a product without having to worry about the complexities of running two different WiFi networks.”

Vince Russell, Managing Director at The Cloud, said: “Partnering with such a well-established and trusted organisation as Janet shows our intent and commitment to being the industry leader in provision of public WiFi in educational establishments across the UK. In an age where mobile and internet are so key to everyday life, WiFi will provide a valuable asset to these establishments as they look to expand on the services they offer.”

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* eMarketer: UK Mobile Users: 2013 Forecast and Comparative Estimates
http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Nearly-Half-of-UK-Consumers-Will-Use-Smartphones-This-Year/1009956

** YouGov Tablet Tracker: http://yougov.co.uk/news/2012/09/11/tablets-nearly-double-2013/ 

Press contact details:
The Cloud
Lorna Hughes or Hugo Deacon
Harvard PR
020 7861 2800
TheCloud@harvard.co.uk

About The Cloud 
• The Cloud (www.thecloud..co.uk) builds and operates Wi-Fi networks across the UK and Europe to provide the mobile media experience that consumers want. The service delivers simple, fast and cost effective broadband to millions of Wi-Fi enabled smartphones, laptops and entertainment devices. The Cloud has exclusive commercial partnerships with retail, leisure, hotels, sports, transport, and entertainment and content partners to deliver its longer-term vision of a connected society.

• The Cloud has over 8 million registered users connecting for over 200 million minutes a week at over 20,000 live locations such as the Emirates Stadium, Silverstone Race Track, the City of London, Wetherspoon, PizzaExpress, Caffe Nero, Eat, pubs, leisure facilities, restaurants and mainline stations.

• Approximately 8 million people pass through The Cloud network everyday by visiting one of its partners, including major outlets such as WHSmith, PizzaExpress, Greggs, Pret and Wagamama, as well as First Great Western and Network Rail stations.

• The Cloud is a BSkyB Company.

About Jisc 
Jisc offers digital services for UK education and research. The charity does this to achieve its vision for the UK to be the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world.

Working together across the higher education, further education and skills sectors, Jisc provides trusted advice and support, reduces sector costs across shared network, digital content, IT services and procurement negotiations, ensuring the sector stays ahead of the game with research and development for the future.

Janet, part of the Jisc group, has the primary aim of providing and developing a network infrastructure and related services that meet the needs of research and education communities.

It connects the UK’s research and education organisations to each other, as well as to the rest of the world through links to the global internet. For further information visit www.ja.net 

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