The demand for high-speed public Internet access is booming. Busy people, especially business travellers, want
access to the Internet and to their corporate Intranets while travelling. This way, they can work and be productive even while away from the office. We refer to this new trend as the "mobile
office" or "office outside the office".
Business travellers spend over 80% of their travel time in so-called "hotspots" i.e. airports, hotels, trade shows, conferences and other
ad-hoc events. The facility managers who operate these hotspots have identified selling public Internet access to the business travellers as a new source of revenue. In order to tap this new source, they
will have to assume a new role - that of service provider.
Hotspot service providers will meet the demand for public Internet access using different access technologies. For example, wireless LAN in
airports, xDSL in hotel rooms, Bluetooth in business meeting rooms and many more.
Independent of the access used, there will be a new market for what we like to call an "IP tollbooth", which
decides
- Which users get access to the network ?
- What services do they have access to ?
- How much do they pay for what ?The Siemens i250 Access Gateway was built to provide the
"IP tollbooth" functionality. The i250 provides a rich feature-set, such as
- API to interface with credit card payment servers.
- SMS messaging features for authentication, authorisation and accounting.
- Modified DHCP, for loadsharing in wireless networks.
- Full redundancy, with two Linux servers sharing the load.
- Customer self-subscription.
- Different billing models i.e. login time to midnight, per-minute billing, flat-rate and more.
- Radius AAA, enabling easy interfacing with Internet clearinghouses and other ISPs.
These features were especially designed to help the hotspot service provider effectively and profitably offer and charge for access to the Internet. As well as offering billable access to the Internet,
the i250 enables the hotspot service provider to offer free local content. Furthermore, the hotspot service provider can offer access to other IP services, such as video-on-demand and gaming, to name but a
few. On this website, you will find a wealth of information, both technically and marketing orientated, to help in understanding how i250 works and how it is positioned in the public internet access
market. |
