We are an operator in the South of Spain, we own our 5GHz wireless network (coverage of about 200Km2) and our own internet backbone network. We offer our resident customers home/business internet and VoIP telephone services (we also own our VoIP telephone network) and we are looking to add HotSpot points within our current network infrastructure to allow "non-resident" customers to access our internet.
Worldspot is your solution for reselling all this bandwidth.
The pricing option that we would likely take would be the "unlimited" usage option instead of tickets ... whilst you appear to be the cheapest, we currenly pay 15% commission to our current operator ... and we want to have more control over the customer.
Do you mean unlimited online billing?
1) Some hotspot points will be individually located whereas others might be clustered in one location (i.e. a campsite with 10 dispersed points for extended wireless coverage). In the scenario where we have a cluster, there will only be one internet gateway from the cluster and one SSID... the other WRTs will only be to extend the wireless reach ... will this count as one hotspot or will each WRT count as one?
I refer to your text "The per hotspot pricing is based on the hotspot mac address. You are allowed to have multiple hotspots configured on the same hotspot account, but you will still be charged per hotspot." ... which is a little unclear.
You can have your hotspots configured exactly the same way (on the same hotspot nasID). WorldSpot can still make a difference with the "calledMAC" radius parameter (hotspot mac address).
If you use WDS range extension, this will still be considered as one single hotspot, as there is still one single chillispot instance. (beware of free memory if you use a WRT)
However, if you want to use a OLSR freifunk mesh (
http://wirds.net) which is more scalable, there will be one chillispot instance per node. In this case, worldspot might be offering another per fixed IP based pricing.
If your hotspot reaches more than 30 simultaneous users, you will be automatically charged some more.
2) The monthly billing is for 31 days ... does this mean that all credits purchased for the month will expire at the end of 31 days or will any unused credits remain in our account to be used later?
I ask this as it will be unclear how active any particular hotspot will be ... therefore we do not want to buy too many and loose what we do not use ... and subsequently, we do not want to purchase too few credits and loose potential customers. We would rather buy too many, knowing that we can reuse the remaining credits later.
The credits have unlimited validity, you never loose unused credits. Every month your credit account will be automatically debited. You will have to make sure your account does not run out of credits. The more you buy credits, the cheaper they are.
3) We intend to deploy 100's of WRTs (as said previously, some will be individual and others in clusters) ... can we have a central account for the credits which can be used by all the WRTs. For example, we have 100 WRTs deployed and we buy 1000 credits ... can the 1000 credits be used by all the hotspots, therefore ensuring that the most active WRTs always have enough and the low activity WRTs are consuming credit ... I suppose I am looking for a credit balance system to ensure the best profitability across the whole HotSpot network.
The credit balance is already implemented, and automatically debited by all your hotspots subscriptions. This means that there is nothing to do (just to creditate your account with a sufficient number of credits every 3 or 6 month or every year if you want)
You can even choose that some low usage hotspots gets billed per ticket, or use revenue sharing online billing.
4) We have our own "online billing account" with a service by 2checkout.com. Would it be possible to use this instead of PAyPal? ... we also have a PayPal account, which some of our customers say is too complicated (especially if they do not speak Spanish and they are setting up a new account within Spain ... it defaults to Spanish language becuase your IP address originates in Spain).
I had a look at 2checkout.com. 49$ setup and 5.5% + 0.45$ looks like a little expensive.
The average customer is stupid (from a technology point of view) so making the process as "idiot-proof" as possible will reduce the customers frustration and also the support calls we will be getting.
I know that paypal requiring the customer address to register an account is a killer. Worldspot is using the Paypal API express checkout which is the simplest interface (should be a one page payment). But there is actually a bug on their side, the customer is asked the paypal account and is proposed to register a new account instead of directly go to the account registration and payment page.
I still haven't found a comparable international service. There is also one feature that is not yet implemented. I will be implementing one day a post-paid surfing. The user gives an authorization to be debited (e.g. 40$), then he surfs, then he will only be debited the amount he did really use (23.40$).
If you still want 2checkout, I could add it with a setup fee.
BTW ... I am very impressed with your translation reponses ... it is good that we give back and not just take! (I would have offered to do the Spanish but someone beat me too it).
I think there are updates remaining to be done...
