Barclays UK Banks to Deploy FREE Wireless Internet WiFi Access

Customers and visitors to 1,500 of Barclays branches (banks) across the United Kingdom will soon be able to benefit from free wireless internet (wifi) access thanks to a new deal with BT Wifi.

BT claims that 41% of the banking customers who took part in their Youbiquity financial sector research, which was conducted with 2,000 UK, US, Spanish and German consumers, felt that free wi-fi would “greatly improve their in-branch experience“.

It’s understood that BT has already conducted trials of its wifi solution at three Barclays branches and the technology is now available to more than half of the groups branches; the rest are set to go live by March 2013.

Ashok Vaswani, CEO of Barclays Retail and Business Banking, said:

“We’ve been listening to our customers about how we can make banking easier for them, and they tell us they like the idea of mobile banking but would often value being shown how it works. We are always keen to show our customers how easy our mobile apps are to use, so we are now rolling out free Wi-fi across our Barclays branches, and our front line staff say this will help them give product demos using our customers own mobiles and tablets. We hope by providing this free service our customers will be able to instantly download and use all our mobile apps, and we are on hand to show them how.”

The service, which should appear in your list of networks as BarclaysFreeWifi when within the banks coverage, is provided and managed by BT as a white label solution.