And We Have Lift-Off - RedButton Free WiFi Product Launched

We had a highly successful launch of our Free WiFi product at Long Street Cafe yesterday. To top it off ITWeb today published an excellent article Dining out on restaurant WiFi which effectively follows up on an ITWeb article Free WiFi is 'hard model to get right' published nine months ago.

We spent the time in between the publication of the above mentioned articles working on our Free WiFi product. Our intention has always been to get the Free WiFi model right, to make sure that venues are provided with a product that is flexible enough to make it work for them in their unique environment. Market feedback is certainly showing that we have got it spot on but we won't rest on our laurels, the work continues.

If you'd like to find out more you may be interested in our news release Boost your business with RedButton's new Free WiFi product.

RedButton Free WiFi Product Preview

We are officially launching our new RedButton Free WiFi Product on the 9th of June and it is available for preview. The product has been specifically built to cater for the needs of the hospitality industry, its all about boosting traditional sales and brand loyalty. Restaurateurs and hoteliers have the control needed to use free Internet as a flexible and effective tool to boost their business.

The following picture of a display outside Wimpy Rondebosch serves as a prime example of how RedButton's Free WiFi product can be used. In this case, since Wimpy is generally chock-a-block serving their legendary breakfasts in the mornings and burgers at lunch time, management decided to make the automatic 50MB free wifi allocation available after 3pm only.

The advantage of an automatic allocation is that little intervention is needed from restaurant staff. Should fine grained tracking be required one can correlate product sales with the free Internet allowance by using venue specific vouchers - for example you get a free 50MB voucher if you order a drink.

We've worked hard on this product. Earlier editions, without all the features currently available but with the fundamentals, have been in operation for nearly eight months now. In the process we have spent time listening to what venue owners have been telling us, listening to what their needs are, rather than what we think they are.

With this product we hope to have once again shown our commitment to flexibility and adapting to market needs. Thanks for listening.

Three WiFi Gadgets That Will Change Your Life

In this grandiosely entitled post we have a look at three WiFi gadgets that could make your mobile life easier, or just help you glow in the dark.

Eye-Fi - Wireless Memory Cards

Eye-Fi produces memory cards with WiFi built in. In essence you are able to upload your pictures automatically to your PC or favourite photo sharing website (e.g. Flickr, Facebook) once you come within range of your regular WiFi network(s). The service that allows for automatic uploading to photo sharing websites, called WebShare, sounds particularly useful. Imagine all the pictures you would finally be able to share effortlessly instead of leaving them on your hard-drive or worse, still on your camera after months, gathering virtual dust.

Eye-Fi comes in 3 versions, Home, Share and Explore. With Home you can upload to your PC at home, share throws in access to WebShare and finally Explore gives you geotagging functionality and complimentary hotspot access in the USA. We can't wait to get our hands on an Eye-Fi SD card, the Share option looks like the one to go for since with Home the pictures will still be stuck on you PC only it will largely happen transparently.

It seems Eye-Fi SD cards have not yet reached South African e-tailers, search results on Digital Planet, kalahari.net and pricecheck.co.za only showed plain vanilla SD cards. The only place we could find Eye-Fi was here on Amazon.com.

Unfortunately Eye-Fi cards will not work with any hotspot network, such as RedButton's network, that require the user to log in via a web browser splash screen (see this Eye-Fi FAQ entry). Allowing access without a browser based login process is something we are not currently working on but we may in future.

Hotspot Detectors / Wi-Fi Finders

There are a number of manufacturers that have released Hotspot Detectors that allow you to check for signal without having to power on your laptop. Why would you ever need one? Well hotspots are not always very well advertised, for various reasons, and these devices make it easy to pick one up. Imagine being in the middle of some town square in a town you don't know and you need to get connected fast and free if possible, you'd look for open networks on your Wi-Fi Finder and probably head to the coffee shop that tops the list in terms of signal strength.

The ZyXel AG-225H Wi-Fi Finder is one that looks half decent. It can do more than just find WiFi, it takes the logical next step and functions as a WiFi adapter.

And Finally...

If Eye-Fi and Wi-Fi Finders don't work for you, why not get the ultimate, a WiFi Detector Shirt? It sports glowing animated bars on the front that dynamically change as the surrounding WiFi signal strength fluctuates. Walk down any WiFied city street at night, perhaps throwing caution to the wind with a quick sprint down a dark alley, and you'll be lighting up like a christmas tree.

Beware the flood trojan - amongst other programs lurking in the shadows

From time to time we have users who have background programs consuming portions of their credit balances at unusually high rates. While some of this traffic is legitimate in the sense that the user may have at some time given their consent to for example automatic operating system updates, in some cases a flood trojan has used the user's computer without their knowledge or will. This is one of many security issues Internet users have to be aware of, irrespective of their service provider.

So what is a flood trojan? In fact what is a trojan? Will RedButton try to punt a PC Security Suite? First lets go into what they can do by way of an example. While assisting in diagnosing a problem on a particular client's laptop, our records showed that it managed to upload 310MB in only 24 minutes. To get a better idea of what was happening we gave the customer a free 10MB, asked him to log in and closely monitored his data flow. It turned out that all 10MB were used up in no less than 33 seconds by some program sending data to a particular Internet server whose hostname ends with "static.theplanet.com". A google search on this topic quickly revealed that a trojan virus was at fault, one with a demonstrably insatiable appetite. It was like feeding a crocodile with goulash. While this illustrates the high upload speed of the underlying broadband connection, consider that background programs such as trojans can consume large amounts of data that a subscriber had paid for without their consent. Flood trojans add insult to injury by using the hijacked connection for malicious activities.

We are going to skip the details of what trojans and particularly flood trojans are, click here to read more, the gist of this post is that the need to continuously secure your desktop to ensure its integrity cannot be overstated. Without a secure desktop you run the risk of having your bandwidth used up and in some cases this can happen at lighting speed. There are some basic security practices that you need to adhere to if you have an operating system such as Windows XP

• Make sure your firewall is enabled
• Make sure your virus scanner is updated and scans your PC regularly - if you don't have one, get one
  
• Make sure you install operating system updates - security holes are often fixed in these
  

There are many anti-virus programs out there, but one free version you could start with is AVG Free, another tool you might want to use is Spybot Search & Destroy.

If the above practices seem like too much hassle, consider an alternative operating system like Ubuntu Linux, it may just be that you can be even more productive with an operating system that is arguably inherently more secure.

Finally please note that RedButton cannot be held liable for any loss or damage incurred through viruses and trojans on customers' computers as their security and administration is clearly beyond our control. This is stated clearly in our terms and conditions that every RedButton customer agreed to (available here).

RedButton's cutting edge hotspot firmware - now even sharper

In an earlier post we unveiled RedButton's firmware with its focus on making it easy to set up reliable hotspots that deliver the world class service our end users expect. Well things have just gotten even better with version 0.9.12 beta being released, hold on to your seats.....

End-users can effortlessly connect to our service, regardless of network settings

A small portion of our end-users arrive at our hotspots with misconfigured network settings that results in them being unable to connect. We currently assist these users with telephonic support but with version 0.9.12 of our firmware such support incidents will be eliminated since all affected users will be able to connect regardless. Should the user have a static IP address or static DNS servers set they will still be redirected to the portal page where they can sign up or login. Eureka!
Not only does this cut down on general support, but it also enhances the user experience at a hotspot. Using a competitor's solution a user not being able to connect would either phone for support or worse just leave the hotspot and never use it. We are okay with the former (supporting the user) but the latter (a user leaving the hotspot) is absolutely unacceptable and the "dark figure" of the number of such cases seems high. Our new firmware certainly addresses this problem resulting in increased revenues for resellers and venues apart from higher customer satisfaction.

Enhanced service and technical support thanks to automated remote access

With version 0.9.12 we can ship our plug & play routers to any remote location and our clients can be assured that simplified network troubleshooting and customer support will be available on a plug and play basis. This is thanks to all routers being constantly accessible remotely 24/7 by RedButton technical staff and in future resellers, without the need for additional configuration settings such as DMZ or port forwarding.
This also enables RedButton to monitor each and every device 24/7, be it a hotspot router or a simple access point/repeater, as long as it runs our firmware of course. If an outage occurs our system will pick up the disconnection in under 3 minutes and notify the hotspot administrator via email after 10 more minutes of no activity.
Ultimately this means that network problems may be detected, attended to and resolved even before the customer calls in to complain - a feature that none of our competitors can currently offer.

The Cisco LED lights up orange whenever your main node or repeater is online

We predominantly use the Linksys WRT54GL. The picture above demonstrates this ability: We have one router (the top router) with the new firmware, and the bottom router with the old firmware. As one can see, the top router's Cisco LED is orange which means it has a valid internet connection. The light is off whenever the Internet connection is off. It is therefore not necessary to access the device's web interface to determine if the Internet connection is the source of the problem. This even works for repeaters or access points connected to the main hotspot router. Configuration and troubleshooting during both installation and maintenance related site visits is thereby greatly simplified and streamlined.

Greatly simplified hotspot installation

In addition to the above the process of hotspot installation by means of configuring your router has been drastically simplified. After having successfully flashed your router with our firmware there are very few steps that need to be carried out in order to get your hotspot up and running. In the majority of cases where you already have an existing Internet connection such as an ADSL line all you need to do is plug a cable from your ADSL modem to the Internet port of your RedButton router. Then connect to its web configuration interface, set the hotspot id which uniquely identifies your hotspot on the RedButton network, save and apply and you're in business. For more advanced setups there's always the firmware documentation to fall back on but even there the configuration is surprisingly simple. Of course if you opt for one of our plug & play routers everything has been preconfigured for you, you just have to plug in the cabling.

Fully automated remote firmware upgrade procedure

Ever tried upgrading your third party firmware to take advantage of new features or greater stability? It usually is a painful and frustrating experience as all carefully adjusted settings must be erased and everything reset to factory defaults. Even saved configuration images are useless as they are not compatible with newer versions. This means you have to do everything on site - a costly and time intensive exercise, especially if you have a large network like ours with hundreds of routers deployed.
With version 0.9.12 this entire process can be fully automated. You as the hotspot owner or reseller don't have to do anything, we take care of it. And for us the entire process has been streamlined to the point where within less than 10 minutes the entire upgrade may be completed. At any time of the day - and if there are any users currently logged into the hotspot the process will politely wait until all of them have logged off. This minimises inconvenience caused to the users, ensures high up time across our network and still enables RedButton to deploy exciting new features across its network whenever the need arises.

Finally...

In a few weeks time after the beta testing phase has been completed successfully we will roll out the production version, 0.9.12 final, across the RedButton network. Naturally our resellers and those opting for the Self Service option of our Prepaid WiFi Product will be able to enjoy the benefits as soon as it has been released.

HSDPA marketing executive predicts HSDPA will triumph

We've commented on comparisons between HSDPA / 3G and Wi-Fi before in "WiFi loses out to 3G/HSDPA. Not Quite." and don't want to repeat the content here. Most of it is relevant to statements presented in recent articles that we believe would best have been entitled HSDPA marketing executive predicts HSDPA will triumph.

The articles in question are Ericsson predicts demise for hotspots and Ericsson predicts swift end for Wi-Fi hotspots. Commentary on Slashdot and the following blog on CNET News.com present a number of counter arguments in particular this one which points out that

Ericsson are a dealer in mobile internet devices. It is in their interest for people to move to mobile internet devices as people who buy mobile internet devices might by an Ericsson one. Ericsson don't do wifi hotspots, so there is no way using wifi hotspots puts money from your wallet into Ericsson's pocket. This displeases Ericsson, so they will now crow from the rooftops that wifi hotspots are dead, in a bid to drum up business for their absurdly-tariffed mobile internet devices.

Minister says 'no' but the ICASA hearings continue

It's not always easy to get a clear picture of the South African telecommunications regulatory landscape. We made a brief mention of some developments in our Happy New Year post and now follow up on recent developments.

Earlier this week, the communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri confirmed that VANS licenses will not be converted to ECNS licenses, as reported on in this ITWeb article. This in itself is nothing new but its not clear whether the 'no' means 'never'. Taking a look at the ICASA website and the latest media release, one sees that on the 17th and 18th of March ICASA will hold hearings on the matter of converting VANS licenses to ECNS licenses. From this one can gather that the 'no' is in fact 'maybe'.

Thats all very interesting, but why should consumers care? Well for one these developments affect how much choice you will have as a consumer. In fact in some areas it could come down to having no choice at all. You may be in some small town where no licensed network operator (ECNS license holder) is willing to provide you, or your local hotspot for that matter, with any kind of Internet connectivity purely because they haven't gotten on to it, perhaps never will, and you'll just have to wait. One should also consider that there are small network operators who are having to dedicate resources to fighting for their right to exists, at some level this must affect the quality of their service. The latter again affects you as the consumer, you are left with less choice.