The ANTlabs SG 4 gateway is the ideal solution for large venue owners to manage and monetize their public access networks effectively. Exhibition centers and those catering to the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibition) industry have a tremendous potential to turn their public WiFi network from a cost center into a revenue center. However, certain challenges need to be overcome for this to become a reality.

• Provisioning: The issue faced here is about how to identify and give your users access to your network. This problem is further compounded by the problem of how to bill users for their Internet access.
• Authentication: The next issue to be resolved is that there are many different types of users, with varying capability for identifying themselves to be granted network access. They will likely need different login methods to suit their profile.
• Authorization: Given that there are different types of users, they will likely need different service levels to satisfy their demand. Their propensity to pay will also vary with different service offering.
• Accounting: Finally, these different users have different usage needs and patterns. Thus the service offering needs to be varied enough to cater to these different profile of users.

Therefore the solution to make monetizing your public WiFi network a reality hinges on being able to differentiate among different profile of users, and tailoring the service experience (and pricing) to fit these user groups:

Exhibitors

This is the core group of users that you would need to satisfy. The SG 4 addresses their needs through its Guaranteed Bandwidth option to ensure ideal network connectivity for a successful demo.

Visitors

This is the next most important and untapped group of users. The SG 4 addresses this group through its web-based forced portal self-service credit card payment portal with different levels of access. Offering a time-limited complimentary access is another good way the SG 4 helps convert potential visitor into paying customers.

Admin Users

Finally staff of venue owners can make use of existing corporate authentication infrastructure (Windows AD or LDAP) to grant network access to its staff. All in all, the SG 4 is the ideal platform to allow large venue owners to effectively and profitably monetize their public WiFi infrastructure by meeting the varied demands of their different groups of customers.