Small restaurant WiFi Hotspot service

My father owns a small restaurant that will be undergoing a revamp soon.

As part of the revamp, my father wants to offer Wi-Fi to his customers (either free or nominal charge - TBD).

The restaurant only has a voice service for now (XLN Telecom) so I am looking for providers who offer a broadband connection plus (or separate) managed Wi-Fi hotspot service.

I'm focused on finding a suitable managed/supported Wi-Fi hotspot service as my father’s PC skills are very limited (can browse the Web and open/read emails - doesn't compose his own) and I work full time elsewhere (so really don't want to be taking support calls from my father when I am at work - or even when I am off work for that matter).

The only providers that spring to mind currently are:

BT Openzone - offer both the Broadband connection through BT Business Broadband + Openzone service

The Cloud - Not exactly sure on The Cloud. My quick glance across the website doesn't give me much to go on, no prices that I can see without emailing them (which I will be doing)

If there are any other options that people know of, I would appreciate the help.

**Exchange info**
The restaurant is located is located on St Peters Street opposite the junction with The Friars and just round the corner from the telephone exchange in Canterbury.
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/NDCAN

The most simple option is to sign up to BT and use thier Openzone network as you mentioned

IAn

Isn't it £5 a day to use bt openzone broadband?

Doubt customers would be happy paying so much

you also won't make any money from the service either.

Take a look at Sputnik. Available on DD-WRT. Get yourself a WRT-54g router (£50ish) flash it with the DD_WRT firmware and subscribe to sputnik which will handle all the billing for you and add any adverts.

We could put a enterprise solution for you but that would be about £1k, Sputnik is very easy to use and flashing a router is not difficult if you follow the instructions carefully. You can even buy them pre-flashed from ebay.

You would need to check your ISPs conditions though

The only thing i wonder about this solution.

If somebody uses the network to download something illegal, will it be under a different ip to the restaurant owners personal network or will it be traced to the owner & not the copywrite infringer?

Eg openreach assigns a completely different ip address to people using the service. These people have to setup an account & pay for access via a bank card. Hence they are traceable & it's clear that the restaurant / coffee shop owner did not download the illegal content such as a music torrent.

you can put a terms of usage on it.

Legally you are probably right it may be better to get a dedicated IP, which you could do - i was unaware the open reach did, only that it separates the traffic from your network (as does sputnik).

However my personnel feeling is that it wouldn't stand up in court, or at least it shouldn't another example of legality stiffiling legal folks life just to ensure the mischievousness cannot do bad.....

-Stands off soap box-

I've emailed both BT Openzone and The Cloud tonight and await there responses.

As for offering a free or paid service, there are several factors to consider.

The restaurant is limited in capacity (3.5m wide x 20m long - seating approximately 40) and my father would probably prefer to have a higher turnover of customers paying for meals/drinks at peak times than sat around using a free Wi-Fi service making one coffee/tea last an hour.

In my opinion, offering a paid (time limited?) service at peak time and then free service off peak would be the best option to entice customers in when you can afford for them to make a single coffee last an hour

Thanks for the input Dominic.

I've had a quick glance at the Sputnik site and it does look interesting (I have a spare WRT54GL that replaced was replaced by an Asus RT-N16 for our home router).

Downside to Sputnik is that I would probably end up being the technical support 24/7 when I'm personally trying to avoid this due to my own commitments (and sanity )

The Cloud got back to me by email and phone today.

£200 setup/install fee
£35 per month managed service fee includes:
-Free customer access
-Our monitoring of the equipment
-24 hour customer support line
-All marketing materials
-General maintenance of the equipment
-Monthly reporting
-Branded banner on your landing page
-Data capture as per the EU legislation

3 year minimum contract term with an approximate lead time of 4 weeks from order.

Apparently Tiscali are used to provide the broadband connection at the moment in time (I did ask as I thought that they would use the BSkyB network seeing as they are now owned by BSkyB).

Nothing back from BT Openzone yet.

In reply to a post by Yaz:

The Cloud got back to me by email and phone today.

£200 setup/install fee
£35 per month managed service fee includes:
-Free customer access
-Our monitoring of the equipment
-24 hour customer support line
-All marketing materials
-General maintenance of the equipment
-Monthly reporting
-Branded banner on your landing page
-Data capture as per the EU legislation

3 year minimum contract term with an approximate lead time of 4 weeks from order.

Apparently Tiscali are used to provide the broadband connection at the moment in time (I did ask as I thought that they would use the BSkyB network seeing as they are now owned by BSkyB).

Nothing back from BT Openzone yet.

Interesting considering that tiscali no longer exist. Tiscali was bought out by talktalk and you can no longer subscribe to tiscali broadband. If you try to access any tiscali related site you'll be transfered to talktalk's website

Just wondering, does that £35 a month include your own broadband connection and line rental?

If so honestly I don't think it's too bad.


The downside to the cloud is the setup fee and monthly fee.

With BT openzone...

You would simply need to subscribe to BT broadband & then enable the openzone service. This is assuming you subscribe to the home service with the homehub. Not entirely sure if it's as straight forward with business broadband.

You would not incur any charges to do this.

Essentially the router would broadcast 2 wireless connections. One for your own broadband, named e.g. BThomehub5432. & the other connection for guests called either 'BTFON' or 'BTopenzone'

The only negatives with this is the customer will not get a free service & will have to pay when they connect to the Wi-Fi. This is all done on a landing page via BT, so you don't have to police it.

Also the service is limited to 512kbps

Both 'the cloud' and 'openzone' options mean if somebody accesses e.g. child pornography / downloads movies torrents on the wifi you will not be liable.

with other services, it might be tracked back to you if the network uses your external IP address.

Keep us updated