NETOPIA TURNKEY Wi-Fi SYSTEM EARNS BELLSOUTH APPROVAL

BellSouth and Netopia will announce this week that Netopia has been chosen to support the RBOC's pilot plan to outfit retailers and small businesses in Charlotte, N.C., with an integrated Wi-Fi hot spot equipment and back office services system that the vendor also is unveiling this week.

BellSouth revealed last month that it plans to set up Wi-Fi access at 100 hot spots in Charlotte's central business district during the second quarter. The carrier will deploy Netopia's new turnkey system, the netOctopus Hot Spot Manager software platform, with the vendor's 3-D Reach Wi-Fi gateways in businesses around Charlotte that are hosting the hot spots. These hot spots will be backhauled via BellSouth DSL lines, and the service will be offered free to both BellSouth FastAccess DSL and dial-up customers.

“You'll see more telcos wanting to do this,” said Dano Ybarra, vice president of marketing at Netopia. “BellSouth's objective is to sell more DSL lines, and this is one more incentive.” Netopia plans to offer its system to carriers and owners of franchise venues, such as restaurants, through a private label approach.

Maury Margol, director of Wi-Fi strategy and product development at BellSouth, said Netopia's new turnkey approach, and particularly the software-based management capabilities, was a factor in the carrier's choice to deploy the hardware.

Unlike the Wi-Fi strategies of some carriers, which have been limited to reselling access in airports, BellSouth is targeting venues such as stores, gas stations, and other small and medium businesses. The user base is expected to be more mainstream than the business travelers who frequent the airport venues.

“The reason carriers ignored these customers before is because they didn't have the infrastructure system to do it right,” said Ybarra. Previously, carriers that wanted to sell hot spot packages to potential business hosts would have had to assemble packages of hardware and software from several different vendors. Ybarra suggested that a turnkey system saves both carriers and owners of potential Wi-Fi venues the cost and complication typically required to buy and install separate pieces, while also giving owners of small public hot spots service support features such as activation, usage control, billing and security, that are more common of larger deployments.

The turnkey system also includes pieces of Netopia's existing broadband delivery system for wireline networks that support “family-friendly surfing,” a setting that businesses hosting hot spots can turn on or off as they wish. In addition, Netopia allows the host merchants to offer their customers cards to activate access to the hot spots.

The access card approach is different than some commercial hot spots in which users activate the service and pay for it through their browsers, but Ybarra believes the businesses will benefit. “Access cards are good for the merchants because they help control the quality of the customer experience during peak usage hours,” he said.

For example, the hot spot venue owner can adjust the price of access and usage duration on the cards to balance usage during peak and off-peak hours. “Merchants can relate to the card because it's just another product they can sell,” Ybarra said. “They can control usage so people might stay online longer in slow business hours, or not as long during busy hours.”

While many businesses, notably franchises such as Starbuck's and McDonald's, need no convincing to become Wi-Fi hot spots, clearly everyone doesn't feel that way. Just last week, Jack Schluesser, CEO of the Wendy's restaurant chain, told investors he didn't consider Wi-Fi important because it impeded the fast food franchise's ability to move customers in and out quickly.

Responding to that comment, Ybarra said, “If customers hang around your business for a while and pay for something, that's good ROI, and a way to build revenue as you move from peak to off-peak hours.”