Has anyone in the USA used or experienced AT&T WiFi Small Site? It is a WiFi service they offer small business that want to offer free wifi to their clients. It consists of a device that runs 2 networks. The price is pretty good but it has a 1 year commitment and before I sign up for it I wanted to know if anyone has experience with it?
Iād say the āTech Support 360ā is definitely something you wonāt need but likely just marketing. Since I donāt know anything about pricing in the USA, whatās the price for a similar package without the āWiFi Small Siteā ?
There are various other means to offer free wifi to your customers. I have setup http://www.hotspotsystem.com/ in the past with a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND V3 router (I flashed the firmware on the router with their version) and they give some nice features like forcing data gathering from your customers in order to enjoy free wifi, social login for customers, forced sharing to social media to get free wifi, editing look and branding of login page, etc., and you can integrate with other services like Mailchimp for email marketing from the data gathered. I also know @JTRTech put a hotspot together himself in the past, Iāll let him explain that I am sure he posted here but was in the Lounge.
Here is what I mentioned on this beforeā¦
It also depends if you will want to use the router AT&T supply, as you wonāt be able to use that service with your own router. Some routers from providers can be pretty good, but some can be locked down to stupidity and very basic, and not cope well when multiple devices connect.
Well thatās $120 in the contract period. Iād say try to do yourself using the methods I mentioned, you will have more flexibility, control and ownership of your solution.
Even if you go for the paid subscription with HotSpotSystem, itās $4.90 or $9.90 a month, or you can go with their free plan. I doubt you will have more than 3000 login sessions a month.
I have a similar feature with comcast Xfinity. But its free. Im not understanding how this benefits you? Cant you just get a cheap router and set that up to give your customers wifi on a separate network? I hate monthly payments on anything! Its usually a rip off. $10 month=$120 year.
You can, but the benefit usually of some sort of specific hotspot solution is to provide customers with a login page and some data collection for customers using the free wifi. I donāt know what AT&T are offering but with HotSpotSystem you can make your free wifi experience just like you would experience in chain coffee shops, etc., and capture some valuable data from customers for marketing purposes. If AT&T donāt give this, I donāt see what worth the $10 a month isā¦
Two networks is easy with vlans itās the hotspot side.
What are you looking to achieve.
No WPA on public with splash page?
Are you looking to collect customer data/registration?
That link just sounds like dual ssid on two vlans with filteringā¦ No mention of registration/data capture.
That is easy, good wifi box with dual lan using two vlans on two subnets and something like opendns can be used for basic content filteringā¦
My setup requires the guest to register on the open network with username, email and password of their choice and REG form has newsletter subscribe opt out.
Since late October it has collected aprox 2000 subscribes (given some emails might be false as they are not curently validated)
My aim is to improve by using the website joomla user database for improved functionality and multi site registration.
Take a look at unifi. They have a hotspot option with customisable splash page and three options for login of;
Agree to terms
Pre configured account
Tickets
I plan to use there system once I work out there auth system and how to hook it up to radius and my registration system as it can run from a ācloud keyā which is a tv remote sized mini PC which acts as a controller.
I dont know what prices are like in your area, In Florida I was paying around $50 for what was advertised as 50mbps - No Term agreement, but that was with Xfinity. And no phone.
Regarding the hotspotā¦ I purchased D-Link dir-865L wich is one of the routers that support Facebook check-in. So my customers have Free Wi-Fi, but first they are landed on my FB page, and they have to ācheck-ināā¦ all their friends can see that they are checked in at my store and that is cool!
My only option is AT&T and I need the two phone lines. This was a bundle deal so price includes 2 phone lines, 12mbps internet, the small site service and the tech support. I probably wonāt use the tech support but the small site sounds interesting. Itās not just a hotspot it comes with several services.
Here is what is included for that price.
Manage public and small group Wi-Fi network names and passwords
Create a branded, customer-facing Wi-Fi connection page
Supplement small group Wi-Fi with 4G LTE backup connectivity
Control user access with advanced URL filtering options
View the number, device type and sign-on method of Wi-Fi users on your public network
Is their connection really unstable? Thatās almost saying āour connection cannot be relied on so we offer you a 4G backup option when our connection goes downā. I know itās useful, but I never seen an internet provider advertise a ābackup solutionā to their main connection as itās almost admitting problems they have!
FreePBX is awesome, is what I am due to install at both our properties.
Changing over from ISDN and even without bundled minutes use age charges will be lower with SIP.
I agree but again itās the only option for internet service I have. Their connection is stable here, I canāt say for other areas but I do know they provide the public WiFi for Wal-Mart here.
So I signed up today for this package. It includes professional install and they bring out signal testers to make sure coverage is what I need. I will let you guys know my experience with it.