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Nationwide unifies business and public Wi-Fi in 700 branches
Nationwide Building Society rolls out a unified Wi-Fi network across both its public and enterprise properties
The Nationwide Building Society has completed a major Wi-Fi network roll-out, unifying both public and enterprise networks across a 700-strong network of high street branches, 16 administrative offices and two datacentres.
The project – supported by comms infrastructure and services integrator Arqiva – formed part of an internal project at Nationwide to improve and streamline the digital banking experience of customers and employees.
As part of this programme, it has already signed a five-year outsourcing deal with Capgemini covering service integration, service desk and user services, deployed an artificial intelligence (AI) service from Tata Consultancy Services to modernise its backend systems, and engaged BT to upgrade its wide area network (WAN), providing a new platform to support its digital transformation.
The Arqiva roll-out, which took place between March and August of 2015, was delivered alongside wireless hardware supplier Aerohive, and Mobliciti, which specialises in the design and delivery of Wi-Fi networks tailored to the specific needs of mobile devices.
“The beauty of the solution we have put in place for Nationwide is it's both fully resilient and standalone, meeting the needs of staff and customers as well as ensuring a PCI-compliant failover from the Nationwide corporate LAN,” said Paul Hellings, director of Wi-Fi and small cells at Arqiva.
“We are also able to provide Nationwide and our other customers with additional security capabilities, such as rogue access point detection, that are so essential for financial services organisations today.”
“Nationwide’s Digital Agenda relies on us providing leading edge enabling technologies for our colleagues and members,” said Martin Boyle, Nationwide divisional director of business transformation. "The new Wi-Fi service is already a major contributor in transforming the way in which we engage our members in branch, enabling them to better exploit the benefits of our digital society.”
Arqiva has undertaken to provide an ongoing network service desk to Nationwide, and will support delivery of its Innovation Lab, which has been set up to test products, devices and ideas around digital banking.
