Hosting a Hotspot
Summary
Host a WiFi Hotspot using your existing Sonic.net DSL connection and WiFi hardware, and get money from Sonic.net every time someone uses it.
Details
WiFi wireless Internet access is growing at an amazing pace. Last year, for the first time, laptop sales out-paced sales of desktop PCs, and many new laptops include integrated WiFi. Hand-held and even desktop systems can use WiFi for Internet access.
WiFi access equipment is selling at an amazing pace, as home users leverage WiFi to unwire their households, making high speed Internet access available throughout the home.
Meanwhile, thousands of people are using DSL from Sonic.net - and, in many cases, also deploying WiFi on their DSL connections. Hundreds more are coming online with Sonic.net every month.
Notably though, the average DSL connection is utilized to just 1% of it's total bandwidth capacity!
Sonic.net has now made it possible to combine these two rapidly growing Internet access areas, allowing DSL customers to share a small amount of their total bandwidth by using WiFi, and letting all Sonic.net utilize each other's WiFi Hotspots in a secure and managed fashion.
Sonic.net DSL customers can share their connection over WiFi, and will be compensated with a pro-rated daily share of 50% of the Sonic.net basic Internet service fee for any others who use it. The end user pool is huge, as Sonic.net has over 30,000 end users currently, and any of them could utilize your link if they happened to be nearby.
End-users who utilize your link will be required to use a VPN (virtual private networking) tunnel and authentication, so they won't be on your IP address space. They'll each get a dynamic IP of their own for their session. This protects you from any potential liability should they do something improper on the Internet. Also, the pool of users are known Sonic.net members, so they're not likely to be doing bad things.
The VPN tunnel also assures the WiFi end-user that they've got a secure connection, all the way to the core of Sonic.net's network. They don't have to trust the host not to sniff their traffic, it's all secure as part of the model. The host also benefits from VPN, as their own use of their WiFi is also encrypted - no more hassles with exchange of inherently insecure WEP keys, MAC addresses, etc.
There's a bit of a financial incentive for sharing this abundant and unused Internet access.
For each day that a neighbor or passing Sonic.net customer uses your link, you'll get 50% of their pro-rated daily basic Sonic.net fees - so, that would be about $0.50 per day, or $9.47 per month. If a non Sonic.net customer wants to make day use, they can pay $3.50 with a credit card, of which you'll receive 50%, or $1.75. All of these credits will be posted to your account, and will offset your own DSL costs, leaving you with a lower monthly bill. If you had some dedication and enough WiFi users, you could even turn your DSL line into a profit center!
If a Sonic.net customer makes use of more than one Hotspot in a day, the hosts of each of the Hotspots split that customer's share of fees. If Sonic.net enters into roaming agreements with other Internet or wireless providers in the future, you may receive additional settlement funds of different amounts.
Sonic.net pays for all credit card transaction processing costs, costs for support and marketing, etc.
Basically, we're taking open community WiFi sharing of DSL and making it totally integrated by offering "Sales, Security, Settlement and Support".
There's also another benefit - if you've got a laptop or hand-held with WiFi, you can use the same configuration of "Sonic.net" SSID and VPN software at home, and at all of our new shared Hotspots.
If you've currently got a WiFi access point which supports NAT and DHCP, plus a switch to connect all of your equipment together, you're ready to serve. There's no additional costs, which makes this very compelling, and the most Hotspots we get up and running, the more interesting it becomes.
We look forward to your participation!
