Nancy Gohring says Surf and Sip and Airpath Wireless have announced Wi-Fi support packages for businesses that want to set up Wi-Fi service.
Surf and Sip provides a $300, one-piece Soekris box and charges a flat $50 a month to handle ongoing network monitoring and support. Cafes can charge or provide the service free. The system blocks spam and lists the location on Surf and Sip’s Web site.
Surf and Sip’s Service Plans provide a standard fee of $5/day, $20/week and $40/month per customer. If a business charges, then Surf and Sip gets 25% of online sales plus the $50/month service charge.
Surf and Sip is targeting the service to cafes that may want to offer free Wi-Fi but don’t want to support it. To offer free access, Surf and Sip figures a cafe should generate at least $100 in new business monthly. That’s because the support fee will cost $50/month and a DSL line will cost $50/month.
Airpath Wireless (FAQ), has a similar offering that costs hot spot locations $25 a month with no setup fee. If more than 50 unique customers use the network in a month, the price goes up. Sprint’s Wi-Fi Access is supported by Airpath’s WiBOSS Hosted Public Access Management Platform. Airpath’s WiBOSS Lite, based on the carrier-class WiBOSS hosted platform, offers an organization an easy way to deploy a managed “free Wi-Fi” access location.
Airpath offers a variety of RADIUS-based public access gateways for their WiBOSS and WiBOSS Lite service. They feature configurable redirect pages to your splash page with advertising and (walled garden) locations where end-users can visit free.
Airpath’s hardware gateways include:
- Airpath WSG-100 - one-piece box, supports 100 simultaneous users.
- Airpath ISG-100 - supports 1,000 simultaneous users.
- Colubris CN-3000
- Colubris CN-3500
- Blue Socket WG-2000
- Proxim AP-2500
- Nomadix HSG
- Nomadix AG-2000w
Airpath also supports other gateway devices. Airpath supports heavy duty hardware that provides additional security and capacity.
Small Net Builder reviewed other one-piece boxes that might be useful for small cafes including the ZyXEL Hot Spot Gateway ($649) which includes a small receipt printer. The one-piece device works with a timer. You can buy an hour, get a receipt and be on the net without hassles. It’s for basic Internet sharing.
ADC and Colubris are integrating the CN300 and CN3000 Wi-Fi gateways with a DSL modem. It draws power from the phone line which makes placement easier and cleaner. You might hide the AP behind wall-mounted art.
Another idea: buy old laptops for $100, install Linux, and integrate the flat screen into contemporary artwork. Sell it as an object d’art and charge $500. Advertising sponsored screensavers might generate $200/mo revenue ($20/page x 10 pages). Supply hot spot management free - in exchange for 5 advertising pages. Everyone wins. Old laptops are cheap.
Other turnkey systems include:
- Alvarion and Pronto’s hotspot gateway
- Colubris and Juniper
- Fatport’s Community gateway
- PCTEL’s Software Access Point
- Proxim Net Manager
- Soekris Community gateway
- Sputnick Community gateway
- Toshiba’s Community gateway
- Towerstream and Aperto
- ValuePoint Network’s HG-2000 hotspot gateway
- Vernier Networks
- Wireless Utility Pole Systems
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