o2 signs 5 year free wi-fi deal with McDonalds:
O2 has branched out further into the provision of free advertising funded wi-fi by signing a five year deal with McDonalds to provide the free internet access in tehir 1,200 UK restaurants, users will have to sign up initially via a straight forward procedure and will then be able to access the service from the participating restaurants UK wide and any other O2 Wi-Fi hotspot.
The fact that users will primarily be signing up with their mobile devices means that their will be some advertising funded occasional promotional messages and texts to fund this offer.
“O2 announced its Wi-Fi rollout in January of 2011, along with an advertising-supported model that requires users to sign up with their mobile phone numbers to receive “relevant, timely content”.
Wi-Fi on the go:
McDonald’s had introduced free Wi-Fi back in 2007 working with The Cloud and BT Openzone, but teh fast fodo chain wants to promote a nationwide network of free and high speed wi-fi access poinst at their restairants.
Gavin Franks, managing director of O2 Wi-Fi.
“This announcement builds on the significant partnerships already secured by O2 Wi-fi in the past 12 months, enabling millions of people the length and breadth of the UK to access the internet for free whilst on the move,”
This new partnership builds on existing relationships that O2 have fostered with large UK businesses and councils such as House of Fraser, Mitchells and Butler (pub chain) and The Borough of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea.
McDonald’s hopes that the O2 deal will raise network quality above what they currently expect, and with some 750,000 patrons regularly logging on, there does need to be some consideration to the future capacity as these figures are growing.
McDonald’s UK IT director Mark Fabes states:
“Recent figures showed that a staggering 750,000 McDonald’s customers are logging on in our restaurants each month and we are always looking for ways to improve our customer experience,”.
Source: TechWeekEurope
Anthony Munns