Free WiFi hotspots

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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RedButton, a local WiFi service provider, is confident that it has a model which will enable coffee shops and other WiFi hotspots to offer sustainable, stable and free wireless access without compromising their bottom line. 
 
RedButton’s solution creates a hotspot which makes it possible to control when and how WiFi is given away for free. For example, a hotspot may only offer free WiFi in quiet times as a way to entice further customers. Alternatively, a hotspot may choose to cap a user’s access in peak times – once they reach that limit they are prompted to switch to a prepaid solution. 
 
"This gives the hotspot the ability to offer free access without putting their entire business at risk," says  Barry Steyn, finance and operations director at RedButton. "It protects them from customers who buy one cup of coffee and chew up all the bandwidth by downloading a lot of data. It also gives the hotspot additional marketing tools to attract customers in slow times."

The company currently has 179 hotspots in its network with plans to significantly grow this number over the next twelve months. 

It uses mainly ADSL lines and 5.8GHz wireless connections for backhaul purposes. "There are many operational and financial factors to consider and we have specific requirements when it comes to procurement. Reliability, maximum attainable bandwidth and associated operating costs are some but not all factors we take into consideration," says RedButton’s marketing and sales director Nico de Wet.

"Unfortunately procurement of backhaul links that meet our requirements has been a fair challenge. One would expect more link types and frequencies than what I have mentioned. We have found that WISPs, who are generally members of WAPA, have been more accommodating than larger players and we are naturally delighted that most WISPs have received their IECS licenses."

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