CASE STUDY:
The Urban by The Prime Company
INDUSTRY: Multifamily Development
DEVELOPER: The Prime Company
LOCATION: Columbus, Ohio
ESTABLISHED: 2020
PRIMARY SERVICES: WiFi and Skyway Platform
THE CHALLENGE
Just one year after welcoming tenants into The Urban, complaints began pouring into The Prime Company’s inboxes. At issue was the property’s wireless network which was not meeting resident needs and required major triage.
The student tenants, who are reliant on robust Wi-Fi to access online learning tools and complete assignments, were struggling with a slow, unreliable network. Some guests found it difficult to even connect to the property network. They began taking matters into their own hands by installing their private routers in their apartments, which only fueled complaints.
On-property management and The Prime Company’s staff were bogged down in trying to address the multitude of complaints. To make matters worse, it was difficult to get adequate technical support and issue resolution from the original internet provider.
The Prime Company engaged Allbridge to assess and troubleshoot the WI-FI issues affecting The Urban’s tenants. This began with a complete on-site property survey, which involved a comprehensive evaluation of the building’s cabling, equipment, network speeds, and coverage gaps.
The survey results revealed a woefully inadequate system. Despite guarantees that each unit would benefit from a speed of 100 Mbps, The Urban was averaging just 0-10 Mbps per unit. Contributing to the issues was the discovery that 25% of the network cabling within the property wasn’t connected. Additionally, the network was “daisy-chained,” which created latency and multiple points of network failure. Allbridge’s analysis identified the pain points that translated to significant resident dissatisfaction and increased management costs.
THE BENEFITS
This project has significantly improved customer satisfaction and increased efficiency for The Urban. Since Allbridge’s reconfiguration and upgrades to the network, resident and guest complaints about network speed and reliability have decreased.
As an added plus, Allbridge’s Skyway platform now enables a new tenant or guest a simple process to register and activate service, which has also reduced operator time and expense during busy turnover periods. The Urban’s property managers are now able to focus more time on ensuring residents are getting the best overall living experiences. Lastly, the upgraded network has notably lowered The Prime Company’s operational costs.
“Since switching to Allbridge, our internet experience has tremendously improved,” said Jared Turner, General Manager of The Urban. “We now have a reliable connection with consistently great speeds. Whenever we have encountered any issues, Allbridge’s support team has been able to resolve them quickly, often within the same day. Additionally, their 24-hour call center is always available to help tenants or management with any concerns they may have. Overall, we are very satisfied with our decision to switch to Allbridge, and would highly recommend them to others.”
Focused on providing services specialized to the customer’s future needs, Allbridge is also working to deploy a tiered system for The Urban to provide residents with the flexibility to choose a connectivity package that best meets their needs, while helping The Prime Company to recapture revenue. Allbridge’s Skyway software platform again enables this functionality. Residents will be able to select a tier of service based not only on higher bandwidth speeds but also on the number of devices they would like to connect. This creates a more personalized experience for customers while ensuring The Prime Company can optimize the revenue and NOI-generating capabilities of the system.
THE SOLUTION
Following its analysis, Allbridge dispatched a qualified low-voltage cabling team to remediate the problems with the fiber and structured copper cabling throughout The Urban. During a follow-up visit, Allbridge upgraded all network components and installed the latest wireless technology, delivering a community-wide, gigabit wireless fabric to the residents.
To eliminate the problem of multiple resident routers within the building, Allbridge implemented the Skyway proprietary software platform, which allowed each resident unit to have their own Personal Area Network (“PAN”) which provides each apartment the ability to securely connect multiple devices. Once completed, follow-up network audits revealed that the router problem was eliminated, and the new network was providing tenants with speeds of 100-150 Mbps per unit – a 10X speed increase from the original network but with ample headroom to increase speeds in the future.
To The Prime Company, enabling the new network required an initial investment, however the ROI of 590% in the first full year of operation created significant financial benefit for Prime.