Service Provider Wi-Fi
Operator managed guest Wi-Fi services (B2B) – a growth opportunity for service providers
Managed Guest Wi-Fi
Never underestimate the dynamic business effects of a managed guest Wi-Fi offering.
A managed guest Wi-Fi solution is much more for operators than just another revenue source. It’s an effective way to build a relationship with their business customers. When delivering mobility and connectivity, service providers will only get to talk with the IT department. When they provide managed guest Wi-Fi services, they get management’s attention. Don’t miss to explore Enea Aptilo Wi-Fi SMP and all its functions.
With Wi-Fi analytics and GDPR-compliant Wi-Fi Marketing, Guest Wi-Fi services offer your business customers valuable insights about their customers and a way to engage with them. As a result, you will gain access to your customers’ management and the sales and marketing teams as they are highly interested in these tools. So, guest Wi-Fi services allow you to broaden your contacts within the organizations and sell other services to your B2B customers. It will also enhance your ability to retain your B2B customers.
But, you don’t have to stop there. Why not make your B2B customers Virtual Service Providers so they can offer managed Wi-Fi and LAN services on your infrastructure? This concept is particularly attractive for businesses such as co-working offices that “aggregate” many smaller businesses.
We offer three different ways for operators to start their managed guest Wi-Fi business. You can either license our software, the Enea Aptilo Service Management Platform™ (SMP), or get it delivered as a service on Amazon AWS through the Enea Aptilo Wi-Fi SMP as a Service (SMP-S). Both options can include the multi-tenant Enea Aptilo SMP Venue Wi-Fi Manager™ allowing you to build your own tailored cloud-based guest Wi-Fi service.
The third alternative is to resell the Enea Aptilo Guest Wi-Fi Cloud™ service, with the unique option to manage your business customers under your own account. You can always start with this fast-track alternative and move to your own operations at a later stage.
With the full Enea Aptilo SMP or SMP-S delivery, you will enjoy the full spectrum of our solutions’ different Wi-Fi monetization possibilities. Either way, you will benefit from our long experience in delivering guest Wi-Fi solutions to various verticals.
Guest Wi-Fi. We have been doing it ever since the very beginning of Wi-Fi back in 2001. Our operator customers have been very successful delivering attractive B2B and B2B2C guest Wi-Fi services based on the award-winning Enea Aptilo Service Management Platform™ (SMP), and they have been recognized for it.
The FIFA 2014 World Cup stadium deployment by Oi and TIM was awarded “Best Use of Wi-Fi 2014” by telecoms.com.
NoHotel Wi-Fi test ranked Telia’s customer Nordic Choice Hotel as the number-one chain in the world in their global ranking of Wi-Fi service quality. They were selected among 4,000 hotels and 50 hotel chains globally.
Rotten Wi-Fi named Dublin Airport, enabled by Eir (formerly Eircom) the fastest airport Wi-Fi in Europe. Rotten WiFi’s users tested and evaluated the quality of Wi-Fi in more than 130 airports.
Site acquisition is different for Wi-Fi and small cells! In cellular macro networks, site acquisition is mainly an engineering activity. The mobile operator rents space from the property owner. As a result, you will get an engineering relationship.
In Wi-Fi and small cells, it’s also a business relationship. The mobile operator needs to sell attractive services to the business customer to get their approval to mount their Wi-Fi access points and small cells. A managed guest Wi-Fi service is the “silver bullet” for your site acquisition challenges. You will offer the business owners something they want, and you will get indoor coverage in the process. It is a win-win.
Use managed guest Wi-Fi as a vehicle to deploy your cellular small cells. The additional cost to deploy Wi-Fi at the same time as small cells are negligible compared to the benefit. Without Wi-Fi, there is a good chance that you will find a gatekeeper asking the relevant question – what’s in it for me?
Carrier Wi-Fi is all about secure and automatic login to the Wi-Fi network. Guest Wi-Fi is all about user engagement. Business customers do not want their users to just fly onto the network. They want to engage with them for branding and providing offers. With carrier Wi-Fi, the Wi-Fi service is part of the subscription. In guest Wi-Fi, it is free for anyone as an amenity. In carrier Wi-Fi, the 3GPP way, operators are supposed to backhaul traffic to the GGSN/P-GW/UPF (most operators still use local traffic breakout though). Guest Wi-Fi uses local traffic breakout to the closest connectivity point to the Internet.
Will these different drivers be a showstopper for site acquisition and your sales of managed guest Wi-Fi? Yes, it can. You do not want to give up the secure Wi-Fi connectivity that you offer your subscribers. The business owners do not want to give up the possibility of engaging with them while they are at their premises.
Enea to the rescue! The Enea Aptilo SMP and our service offering Enea Aptilo SMP-S has built-in functionality for everything Service Provider Wi-Fi with functionality both for Carrier Wi-Fi and Guest Wi-Fi. We can uniquely bridge those two worlds together. When your subscribers enter your business customer’s premise, they will be securely and automatically connected to the Wi-Fi network through an EAP-SIM/AKA or EAP-TTLS/TLS authentication. Then, if policies for that location dictate, the subscriber will be engaged with a message from the business customer. This message can be tailored to the location and delivered through an SMS or email. Using the new IETF Captive Portal API (RFC8908 and RFC8910), it is also possible to forward the user to a venue-specific portal to display the desired information.
You will get access to download all our Wi-Fi-related collaterals including White Papers and Solution Briefs. You may also want to visit our insights section.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us!
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