The Ritz London is now the first hotel in the UK to fully utilise a 10GB internet connection

Exponential‐e, the British cloud, network, and unified communication provider, has announced the successful installation of a 10GB fibre circuit into The Ritz London, one of the world’s most prestigious hotels. The implementation positions The Ritz as the only hotel in the UK to be able to offer guests and staff the resilience and speed of a 10GB service delivered over Exponential‐e’s 10GigE service, which was launched in 2017.

The Ritz strives to be visionary and is constantly evolving in order to deliver the very best experience its clients. As guests staying at the hotel seek to access more bandwidth‐hungry services and events incorporate technologies that require additional computing power – such as Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality – staff increasingly need access to real‐time data to enhance the luxury experience the brand is known for. Consequently, upgrading its existing 1GB service to 10GB made complete sense.

Richard Isted, IT Manager at The Ritz explains,

“As a luxury hotel, we always try to pre-empt and exceed the expectations of our guests at The Ritz and how our clients use digital services during their stay with us, or within any of our food and beverage outlets, is a key part of their overall experience. As technology continues to advance, we must be able to support access to the latest innovations and services, whether that may be a client who wishes to stream Netflix from their tablet or an event that is taking place at the hotel is using VR headsets. There can be as many as 1200 connections within the hotel, including our colleagues, accessing the network at one time and they expect a faultless service, which is exactly what we can deliver over Exponential‐e’s 10GigE service.”

The network has been delivered through one connection, subsequently split by an Ethernet demarcation device and delivered through two separate SFP fibre ports. This has meant that both the corporate network and the guest connectivity is delivered from the same provider, but split into two different flexible bandwidths. At the same time, the hotel’s network outlay has been greatly reduced by taking on the one, large‐scale offering from Exponential‐e.

Security and compliance is inbuilt within the Exponential‐e service offerings, with Exponential‐e continuing to work with the hotel in its work to remain GDPR‐compliant.

Philip Harmer, Head of Hospitality & Leisure at Exponential‐e says

“It has been great to work alongside The Ritz hotel over the past five years, to enable them to grow and prepare themselves for the new technologies we are going to see become commonplace in the hospitality industry. The latest 10GigE connection means that The Ritz have established themselves as front-runner in future proofing within the hotel industry – the first in the UK to give themselves this amount of reliable, compliant, flexible bandwidth to use. From the Internet of Things to the widespread use of Augmented and Virtual Reality, the hospitality industry faces a future that demands connectivity. We are proud to provide this for The Ritz on an ongoing basis.”

Source Exponential-E