McCarthy and Stone

The challenge

As any IT Manager knows, getting the right communications solution to a new site is a complex and frustrating task. Delivering to a Green or Brownfield location only exasperates this. This is the daily chore of any IT project management team within the construction and utilities industry. Here’s how Comms365 and its Fixed IP Mobile Data Services solve the problem.

Reliability and Flexibility

3G and 4G Services can be used to enhance communications in many ways.

Having a Fixed Public IP assigned to a SIM was a prerequisite for McCarthy & Stone. The Comms365 solution offered both reliability and flexibility across multiple mobile operators.

Taking customer satisfaction to the next level

Just like us!

For the tenth year running, McCarthy & Stone has been recognised with a 5 Star Award from their customers through independent customer satisfaction surveys undertaken by the Home Builders Federation (HBF).

Comms365 has the same dedication to customer service and strives to offer the most comprehensive level of care and attention and this is one of the reasons our customers come back to us again and again to fulfil new sites.

Information when it is needed

As part of the overall solution, Comms365 has also provided McCarthy and Stone with access to its advanced management portal – CommsPortal – which has proved invaluable by alerting McCarthy & Stone to any SIM’s nearing their data limit (in real time) and showing full visibility of all SIM’s within the estate in a single view. This allows the team to proactively manage the services that are being supplied.

Understanding requirements

McCarthy & Stone is the UK’s leading retirement house builder of privately owned property. Over the past 38 years, McCarthy & Stone have built almost 50,000 apartments nationwide. With property development, the need for a stable fast Internet connection for site offices is always a challenge and Comms365 was contacted by McCarthy & Stone in late 2013 to provide a Business Class data SIM service.

The requirements included a Fixed Public IP Address for each SIM, a choice of all four UK mobile networks with 3G and 4G options. This is a service Comms365 has been providing UK business since 2008, so was easily able to fulfil the requirement.

Fixed IP SIMs

Comms365 offers SIMs from all UK mobile operators and utilises its own core network to assign a fixed public or private IP to each connection. The fixed IP enables two way communication including remote monitoring, between the end device and the central office (or anywhere in the world).

Other services such as Internet Access, VPN, CCTV, Secure Corporate access can be applied using the Comms365 service.

As Comms365 is an actual network service provider, customers can be assured that should a problem arise, Comms365 engineers are able to assess the issue from an end to end perspective and resolve quickly.

Comms365 Fixed IP SIMs are extremely flexible and can be configured as standalone or designed into complex multi-site MPLS IP VPNs. Both Managed and Unmanaged services are available.

McCarthy and Stone & Comms365

McCarthy and Stone also requested a stock of inactive SIM’s be provided, so that they could order services and have them activated on the same day, to allow for rapid deployment of the solution.

The customer has a mix of 3G and 4G SIMs to suit individual sites, but all of them can be managed via the CommsPortal application.

Fit for purpose

Eugene Chadaj, IT Hardware Manager at McCarthy & Stone commented:

“Since we started working with Comms365, we have found them to be responsive in getting the SIM’s despatched or activated, which is most appreciated, as we are placed under pressure to have connectivity to site day one, which is always challenging”.

Eugene also added:

“In the past, before we started using the Comms365 services, we had lots of delays with service providers letting us down getting new lines into our construction sites, so 3G / 4G has really allowed us to connect the sites earlier, which is a big help to the business”.