The CEO of digital connectivity provider Purple says its unified WiFi network deal with Newcastle City Council is an “inflection point” for the business.
Oldham-headquartered Purple has partnered with the council to deliver an extensive city-wide WiFi network for residents, students and visitors.
With the rollout of free WiFi across council buildings and other participating venues, including gyms, libraries, commercial buildings and public spaces, the partnership aims to transform Newcastle into one of the UK’s most digitally inclusive and connected cities.
Powered by the Purple app, the initiative aims to create a seamless, secure and dense network of connected locations throughout the city.
“We’re several months in and the partnership has exceeded what we hoped for at launch. The unified network is live across council buildings, libraries, gyms and public spaces, with both of the city’s universities and the transport network being woven in too,” Gavin tells BusinessCloud.
“Alongside that we’ve been steadily onboarding local businesses, from larger commercial venues right down to independent cafes in places like Jesmond. Venues with existing broadband can be up and running in less than half an hour, which has been a real accelerator for sign-ups.
“What’s most encouraging is that residents and visitors are using it the way we always said they would: download the Purple app once, then roam the city without ever filling in another form.
“Jenny Nelson and her team at the council have been outstanding partners. They were brave enough to be first, and that bravery is paying off.”
He adds: “It’s a genuine inflection point for us. Newcastle is the first city in the world to deploy a unified network of this kind, and what we’ve built there is a blueprint we can replicate.
“We’re in active conversations with councils across the UK, and there’s significant international interest as well.”
Purple, which featured on our MarTech 50 ranking, has made two senior hires to lead those conversations. Iain Fox joined as its VP growth, public sector earlier this year, bringing more than a decade of experience working with local authorities to bridge the digital divide; while Tim Peers joined as VP education shortly after, with over 20 years in the sector and a SaaS background focused on student engagement and institutional outcomes.
“Bringing in that level of seniority to focus exclusively on these markets tells you how seriously we’re taking the opportunity,” says Gavin.
Egg hunt
To mark the launch, drive awareness of the app and encourage engagement with the city’s digital infrastructure, Purple hosted a city-wide digital ‘Egg Hunt.’
Five eggs worth £1,000 each were hidden across the city and can be claimed by joining a WiFi network via the Purple app or adding a new venue to the network.
“Three of the five have been found, which gave us exactly the kind of engagement we hoped for,” says Gavin. “The standout story is a Newcastle University student who’d seen our ads, downloaded the app, and then stumbled across an egg while out shopping with friends in the city centre.
“That’s the loop working perfectly: awareness, download, real-world activation, and a winner who happens to be exactly the demographic we want using a unified city network.
“Two eggs are still out there, so anyone in Newcastle reading this should download the app and keep an eye out.”
Merger
In November 2025, Purple announced a merger with Splash Access, a WiFi provider to the shared residential and education markets.
Splash Access, based in Leyland, Lancashire, has built a specialised Cisco platform which enables clients to benefit from advanced features such as multi-factor authentication and secure visitor management.
“We’re around six months in and the integration has gone more smoothly than most,” reveals Gavin. “The two businesses turned out to be remarkably complementary rather than overlapping.
“Splash has spent 14 years specialising in secure connectivity for multi-dwelling environments, particularly student accommodation, where they’ve successfully connected millions of students across major US universities through their work with Cisco. We’ve spent a similar period building the leading guest WiFi platform, now serving nearly 500 million users across 80,000 venues. We were in adjacent spaces all along, but we never competed.”
The deal came about because Tim Ormrod, the former Splash Access CEO, and Gavin had known each other for years.
“Splash had built something brilliant but it had reached the natural ceiling of what a small, focused team could do alone,” says the latter. “As Tim describes it himself, he reached a ‘put up or shut up’ point: either pour significant new capital into scaling Splash, or find the right partner.
“He went looking for the best partner in the market and we’d quietly been thinking the same thing about each other for a while. From the first serious conversation it was clear the cultural fit was right, which is usually what makes or breaks these deals.”
Industry shift
Gavin says that there has been an industry shift towards WiFi that knows who you are, not just where you are – and Purple is determined to lead it.
“For years we’ve innovated on the traditional WiFi login experience, the splash page you see when you connect at a hotel or cafe, and we’ve built what we believe is the best version of that in the world,” he says.
“But the next leap is removing the splash page entirely and replacing it with something smarter. Instead of every venue treating you as a stranger every time, the network recognises you, knows what you’re entitled to access, and connects you accordingly.
“It’s a better experience for the person on their phone and a much stronger security model for the business running the network.”
The long-term goal for the business is a billion secure connections by 2030. “It’s deliberately ambitious because the opportunity is genuinely that big.
“To get there, we need to be the network that follows you across cities, workplaces, homes and venues, wherever you happen to be, and we need to make that experience so seamless that people stop thinking about WiFi at all.
“The ambition is to make secure, seamless connectivity a genuine utility, something people take for granted in the same way they take electricity or water for granted.”
Exit plans
Asked about his long-term plans for exiting the business, he answers: “We’re building Purple to be a category-defining business and we’re focused on the work in front of us rather than the exit.
“The opportunity to make secure connectivity a genuine global utility is once in a generation and that’s what gets us out of bed. When the time comes to think seriously about an exit, whether that’s an IPO, a strategic sale or something else, we’ll do it from a position of strength.
“But that’s not where our attention is today.”