The three "must haves" on your tenants’ connectivity wish list

Tech Trends | Marie Escaich on December 23, 2016

Technology lies at the heart of an increasing number of business operations – whether that’s using Cloud software, managing e-commerce platforms, or just sending emails.

Businesses across all industries are in the midst of a digital transformation and, as a result, are increasingly dependent upon connectivity. The downside? When the internet goes down, operations grind to a halt. To offer future-proofed working environments, landlords must ensure they meet the increasingly ambitious connectivity needs of tenants. But when it comes to commercial connectivity, it can be difficult to know where to begin.

To get started, landlords need to consider what the priorities are for their current and future tenants – so what is it they want?

Quick set up

When moving into new office space, tenants want to get connected right away. Horror stories of businesses relying on 3G dongles for months while they wait on wayleave documents are too frustratingly common and have a significant impact on business productivity.

A standardised wayleave document can help speed up the connection process for new tenants. The City of London’s new Standardised Wayleave Toolkit is a prime example of how broadband providers, landlords and developers can get businesses connected faster.  

Selling the dream of fibre to a new tenant when it’s not available throughout the building can cause businesses further delays in getting connected. Costly and time consuming, a stalled internet set up can be infuriating for new tenants. Greater clarity around the specific connectivity offering within the building can help avoid this.


The cost of internet is always going to be on a tenant’s connectivity wish list. While this does depend to a greater extent on broadband providers, developers and landlords still have a role to play in keeping prices down for their tenants.

Having a choice between internet services gives tenants flexibility and space to negotiate the speeds that potentially better fit into their broadband budget. Offering multiple internet service providers (ISPs) or having secure space available in the building for new ISPs to easily come in and provide their services, protects tenants from an internet provider with a monopoly on the building – and the prices to match.

Staying online

Staying online is ultimately the top priority for tenants’ connectivity. While you can put on an extra jumper if a building’s heating breaks or fetch bottles of water if there’s a problem with the pipes, connectivity is crucial to business operations - if the internet goes down, employees have no choice but to work from home or neighbouring coffee shops to ride out the storm.

Making infrastructure investments to minimise the risk of disruption and provide backup connections is important for landlords to help ensure that their tenants’ businesses never go offline.

Digital transformation is revolutionising all industries, and as digital services play an increasingly important role in a tenant’s day to day productivity, it’s essential that landlords ensure they are proactively understanding their properties’ connectivity infrastructure to guarantee that their buildings meet their tenants’ digital needs.

There’s no great mystery to what tenants want from their connectivity - quick, cheap and online. But in ensuring that the tenants’ connectivity wish list is met, landlords can differentiate their properties as those which can meet the needs of the modern, digital business.

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