Technology Innovator Streamlines Connectivity with Support from Hughes

Customer

With roots extending back more than 40 years, this technology and services innovator offers a full suite of in-store retail and digital solutions. Supporting digital financial transactions across hundreds of thousands of locations within its US footprint, the brand engages customers directly and enables retailers to drive growth through its integrated platform.

Retail partners can leverage tailored terminals, kiosks, and other equipment alongside existing point-of-sale systems and hardware to streamline transactions. Digital signage and customer-friendly purchase options help build awareness and strengthen sales performance in diverse retail environments.

Challenge

The organization’s previous connectivity arrangement had reached end-of-life and the enterprise sought a more future-ready solution to replace it. Security and reliability to support time-sensitive financial transactions were top priorities, along with maintaining separation from other co-located network connections and delivering scalability to quickly add new retail locations without disrupting other transactional or operational systems.

Migration scope encompassed more than 80,000 endpoints spread across the country and included disparate retail environments such as convenience stores, gas stations, and grocery and supermarket locations. Endpoint access to wireline services was highly varied and sometimes entirely absent due to the dynamic nature of each location and the number of local carriers involved. The customer also had a lengthy portfolio of regional contractual considerations that had to be accommodated.

The cutover process required tight orchestration and extensive frontend planning to minimize downtime resulting from either connection disruptions or technicians’ onsite work at each retail location. Maintaining system availability was a primary concern and the project’s emphasis centered on early coordination and the selection of a highly reliable and resilient solution.

Solution

The technology innovator has relied on Hughes for critical connectivity for three decades and continuing that partnership enabled the brand to modernize the technology within its disruption-intolerant environment. Hughes delivered the expertise and ecosystem relationships to deploy last-mile connectivity across their expansive US footprint while maintaining the reliability, security, resilience, and scalability necessary for high-volume financial transactions.

The rollout of an enterprise 4G cellular wireless solution exceeded expectations for maintaining system uptime and minimizing onsite disruptions to ensure continuity of operations. Professional technicians worked alongside the organization’s field team to train them in expedient hardware configuration, provisioning, and installation to deploy Ericsson Cradlepoint devices and SIMs, with most rollouts taking less than 10 minutes to complete. The brand’s service group is also trained to support the new solution in day-to-day use. Hughes continues as lead on backend managed services to ensure the backbone architecture remains stable and performant.

Transactions are now handled through the 4G network solution that delivers high bandwidth and less latency than older VSAT services. The customer can process large purchase volumes using a segregated network, without the need for wireline connectivity access and its lengthy installation lead times. Connection diversity improves resiliency and flexibility, helping the brand deliver a consistent customer experience no matter the location.

The partnership has simplified, streamlined, and elevated the network connectivity capabilities for the customer, its retail partners, and consumers. Migrating to an enterprise 4G solution gave the customer a network that’s faster to deploy and grow, more economical to maintain, and easier to manage.

Outcome

The Hughes technology and services deployed for this customer include:

• 4G cellular network solution at each retail/end location to ensure reliability, security, and resilience, and minimize latency
• Ericsson Cradlepoint devices to connect onsite hardware to the cellular network
• SIM cards