Two Very Different Use Cases – Three UK

Let’s pick two Enea customers to illustrate two very different use cases and deployment models of Wi-Fi Offloading. In this post, we’ll explore how Three UK is leveraging a third-party Wi-Fi network to implement selective Wi-Fi Offloading. Previously, we discussed how Swisscom expanded its Wi-Fi footprint by developing a comprehensive Wi-Fi service, including B2B Wi-Fi, to facilitate Wi-Fi Offloading.

Utilizing Third-Party Wi-Fi Network

Three is the fourth-largest mobile network operator in the United Kingdom, with about 10.3 million subscribers as of May 2023. The company launched on 3 March 2003 as the UK’s first commercial 100% 3G network. It provides 3G, 4G, and 5G services through its own network infrastructure.

The London Underground has almost no mobile phone coverage. To provide mobile Internet access to passengers, TfL (“Transport for London”) has built an operator-independent Wi-Fi network that covers all the stations and platforms of the London Underground. Mobile operators may then lease capacity in the Wi-Fi through the third-party intermediary – Boldyn Networks (former BAI Communications).

Three UK leverages Wi-Fi Offloading to bring connectivity to the London Underground without deploying a single Wi-Fi Access Point (AP). They leverage Boldyn’s Wi-Fi network and utilize Enea Aptilo Service Management Platform (SMP) for seamless and secure subscriber onboarding to the third-party Wi-Fi network via SIM Authentication.

This strategy enables Three UK to provide their customers with secure, reliable, automatic, high-speed connectivity in a challenging environment on a daily basis. The number of unique users in February 2024 was around 813,000, which aligns with the average monthly user count over the last year.

The session count doubled compared to a year ago, and data usage has increased by approximately 50 % during the past year to around 185 terabytes in February 2024. Since the service is unavailable in transit between stations, connectivity is spotty with relatively short sessions. In February 2024, there were over 40 million sessions.

Three UK has been purchasing capacity in the London Underground since 2015, initially using captive portal-based end-user authentication through a Three UK-hosted Enea Aptilo SMP.

In 2022, this solution was replaced by the Enea Aptilo Wi-Fi Service Management Platform as a Service (SMP-S). Enea Aptilo SMP-S is the industry’s first and only complete Software-as-a-Service Wi-Fi service management solution for operators, hosted as a customer-dedicated instance and managed by Enea, with a service availability above 99.99%.