Posted: 27th May, 2003 By: MarkJ
Free broadband wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) Hotspot access is being offered at the Kingsway Hall Hotel in London (Covent Garden):
Punters will be able to get Internet access from the bar and lounge area of the Kingsway Hall Hotel free of charge. The network uses via wireless LAN technology from Buffalo Technologies.
Craig Reid, technical sales engineer at Buffalo, explained the business model behind the scheme. "We believe you can get people into a business who wouldn't normally come by offering free WiFi access. Buffalo makes money from selling the equipment to do this," he said.
FREESPOT equipment differs from vanilla 802.11b technology in three important respects. There's pop-up technology so users are greeted with an advert of the day when they first log on and a 'privacy seperator' in access equipment prevents consumers sharing their hard disk contents. Last, there's a timed access facility so WiFi access is only available when a business is trading.FREESPOT is a product from Melco Inc. (parent company of Buffalo Technology) and is expected to find its way into a further 10 to 15 UK reference sites. More @
The Register.