Venterra Realty (Houston) announced that it has begun rolling out its new initiative, Community Wide Wi-Fi, starting with the company's first property, The Preserve at Colony Lakes Apartments. The Community Wide Wi-Fi service provides Venterra residents and employees with fast, reliable, and accessible internet throughout all areas of the property. For the initiative, Venterra has partnered with Comcast Xfinity to provide fiber-optic Internet services to 14 communities in the Houston, Texas area.
Through the placement of an access point and Ethernet port inside each unit of the properties, as well as in common areas, a community-wide Wi-Fi mesh network is created, which provides Venterra residents with fast, reliable, and accessible internet throughout all areas of the properties at a significant savings to residents over the standard retail rate, said the provider.
"Venterra has historically invested in several technologies in pursuit of creating 'Smart Communities' for our residents,'' commented John Foresi, CEO of Venterra. He continued, "Installing a true 'Community Wide' Wi-Fi network has always been a crucial factor in truly making a community 'smart'. With this innovation, we are thrilled to finally be able to provide efficient mobilization and Wi-Fi access to the employees, residents and visitors the second they step foot on our properties."
Aligned with the company's core value of providing unparalleled service excellence, Venterra cites itself as an early adopter of this solution in the multi-family industry, and adds that it "understands that the benefits far outweigh the challenges involved with implementation" and will in the future allow Venterra to install IoT devices to further drive operational efficiencies.
Community Wide Wi-Fi is positioned as a complement to Venterra's other technology-focused innovations for its properties, including its Touch-Free SMARTPACKAGE Lockers, SMARTHOME features, and Venterra's Resident App, SMARTHUB.
Venterra said that execution of the solution required several months of planning, and only 8 weeks to install. After two installation appointments in each individual apartment, residents who requested to opt-in to the new service received instant access to a private Wi-Fi network inside their apartment as well as the Ethernet port with download and upload speeds of up to 500Mbps for $60 per month.
"Our first implementation at The Preserve at Colony Lakes proved to be a success, with 90% of residents opting into the new service during the first week. This high degree of uptake from our residents is indicative of the value the service provides to them," reported Venterra Chairman, Andrew Stewart.
Stewart added, "We will now be rolling out the upgrade to our infrastructure across the rest of our communities, allowing our residents and employees to stay connected no matter where they are on the property and ensuring our communities are well prepared with the technology infrastructure they will need in the future."
Learn more at www.Venterra.com.