Co-Living
Co-living IT solutions — two networks in one building, done properly
Co-living is the most technically demanding residential vertical to get right. Private rooms need residential-grade network isolation. Community spaces need hotel-lobby Wi-Fi density. Smart-building systems, community apps and short-stay churn sit on top of all of it. Pacific Infotech Group designs and supports co-living IT estates that handle all three simultaneously.
Private rooms
Per-unit VLAN isolation
Residents expect network privacy. Room 204 cannot see traffic from room 312. Enforced at every access point via per-unit VLAN — the same architecture as MDU.
Communal spaces
Hotel-lobby density coverage
40–80 simultaneous devices in a shared kitchen or lounge. High capacity, fast roaming, zero dead zones — designed as a hospitality-grade public space.
Operational realities
What co-living operators actually need from IT
Co-living borrows from hotels and residential — and the IT requirements of both apply simultaneously. Treating it as either one in isolation produces a system that fails the other half of the brief.
Two Wi-Fi environments in one building
A co-living development has two fundamentally different Wi-Fi demands under one roof. Private rooms need per-unit VLAN isolation — residents expect the same network privacy as a residential tenant. Communal spaces (kitchens, lounges, co-working zones, roof terraces) need hotel-lobby-density coverage — 40 to 80 devices in a shared space, with high bandwidth demand and fast roaming between access points. Designing for one and hoping the other works is the most common co-living Wi-Fi failure.
App-driven resident experience
Co-living operators increasingly run community apps for amenity booking, maintenance requests, visitor access and resident-to-resident messaging. Those apps require reliable Wi-Fi, stable DNS and — in some cases — local network infrastructure that integrates with the booking platform. The IT partner needs to understand what the community app requires from the network, not just what the network requires from the building.
Smart-building integration heavier than hotels
Co-living developments often integrate more smart-building technology than a typical hotel — keyless door access to every room and communal space, parcel lockers, EV charging, smart energy metering and building management systems — all landing on the same IP network. Each system has a vendor and a commissioning requirement. The network has to support all of them without becoming a patchwork of conflicting VLANs and undocumented subnets.
Hospitality expectations on residential tenure
Co-living residents stay weeks to months. They pay a premium that includes the experience of living there — and they expect the Wi-Fi, the intercom, the door access and the community app to work as reliably as a 4-star hotel. They will not absorb the level of inconvenience a traditional residential tenant might tolerate. The reliability bar is set by the marketing materials, not by the lease terms.
Short-stay churn means more device onboarding
A co-living building with 200 rooms and an average stay of two months turns over its entire resident population six times a year. Each incoming resident needs to connect to Wi-Fi, register their devices and — in some cases — be provisioned for door access. The resident onboarding flow for connectivity has to be fast, self-service and reliable. A process that requires the building manager to manually provision each new resident does not scale.
Our services for co-living
Co-living IT solutions — what we deliver
Scoped for the dual demands of co-living — private residential network requirements and communal hospitality-grade coverage, on the same infrastructure.
Wi-Fi Solutions→
Private-room VLAN plus hotel-density coverage for communal kitchens, lounges and co-working zones.
IT Infrastructure & Networks→
Core switching, structured cabling and riser design for mixed-use co-living developments.
CCTV Solutions→
IP CCTV across lobbies, communal areas, car parks and perimeter.
Managed IT Support→
Remote-first managed support with a resident-facing helpdesk and ticket portal.
Cyber Security→
Dual-zone network segmentation, GDPR-compliant resident data handling and threat monitoring.
VoIP & Telephony→
Intercom, door-entry telephony and management-team communications setup.
IPTV & PMS Solutions→
In-room IPTV and integration with co-living property management platforms.
New Build IT Projects→
End-to-end IT from RIBA Stage 2 for new co-living developments.
Cloud & Microsoft 365→
M365 and cloud infrastructure for the co-living management and operations team.
IT Gap Analysis→
Free audit of your co-living IT estate against best practice for your resident count.
Vertical differences
Co-living versus hotels and MDU — where the IT converges and diverges
Co-living borrows IT requirements from both hotels and MDU. Understanding which requirements come from which vertical is what separates a correct design from a compromise.
Co-Living
Hybrid — hospitality communal, residential private
- ✓Private rooms need per-unit VLAN — same as MDU
- ✓Communal zones need hotel-lobby density — same as hotels
- ✓Community app and amenity booking infrastructure required
- ✓Smart-building integration heavier than either pure vertical
- ✓Short-stay churn — resident onboarding must be fully self-service
Hotels
Transient, PMS-driven, front-desk staffed
- —Guests stay 1–7 nights — no per-room private VLAN needed
- —PMS is the operational core — IPTV, telephony integrate to it
- —F&B IT adds complexity co-living doesn't typically have
- —PCI-DSS scope heavier — more payment terminals and card data
MDU
Long-stay, minimal amenities, bandwidth-heavy
- —Residents stay months to years — lower churn and onboarding load
- —Communal areas simpler — no hotel-density zones to design for
- —No community app requirement — resident portal is simpler
- —Same per-unit VLAN requirement — at potentially larger scale
Co-living clients
Co-living developments we’ve worked on
Large-scale co-living deployments where the dual-zone Wi-Fi challenge was the starting point, not an afterthought.
Folk CoLiving — Palm House
1,500+ residents
The Collective Old Oak
546 apartments, 114 APs, 2,000+ residents
Start here
Free IT Gap Analysis for co-living
A senior engineer reviews your co-living IT specification or live estate — private-room VLAN design, communal-zone coverage, smart-building integrations and resident onboarding. No obligation, no sales pitch.
Same-business-day response from a senior engineer.