O2 Wi-Fi is designed to address the many shortcomings of current public Wi-Fi offerings by being fast, genuinely free to customers, reliable and simple-to-use. The first hotspots will be initially rolled out to 199 Harvester restaurants by early summer, with rollout to the remaining restaurants and pubs completed by October this year. O2 Wi-Fi will then be available to accompany the 125 million meals and 425 million drinks Mitchells & Butlers serves its guests each year.
O2’s premium Wi-Fi hotspots are accessed through a simple sign-up process and are free to both O2 and non-O2 mobile customers, providing seamless connectivity to a high quality network. All hotspots are premium public hotspots, delivering a significantly enhanced user experience, which will soon also allow people to access additional services, including entertainment and mobile payments.
Gavin Franks, MD of O2 Wi-Fi said: “Wi-Fi should be about accessing the internet quickly, seamlessly and, most importantly, where people want to use it. That is why this partnership – with the leading operator of restaurants and pubs in the UK – is such an exciting one. Pub and restaurant goers will soon be able to receive promotional offers, check the football scores, reply to their emails and update social media sites over a Sunday roast and a pint. Our business strategy is to show fresh thinking to enable new possibilities for our customers, and the hope is that users of O2 Wi-Fi, be it in our partnered venues or through our outdoor hotspots, will now begin to enjoy the full, unrestrained potential of what Wi-Fi as a technology can offer.”
Robin Young, Operations Director at Mitchells & Butlers said: “Every day in each of our restaurants and pubs our people aim to provide great guest experiences and the availability of free Wi-Fi will give us a further opportunity to enhance this. Whether guests visit us to relax over breakfast, brunch or dinner, work away from the office, or have a beer with friends and colleagues, we know from talking to them that free and easy to use Wi-Fi is something they want in the restaurant and pub environment.”