Internet service provider Inter.net Global LLC launched its suite of bundled wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) solutions for customers in Canada who want to deploy hot spot access zones.
The company’s Wi-Fi solutions are out-of-the-box, turnkey products and are available in 42 countries, including Canada and the U.S. The service was originally developed and launched in Berlin three months ago, the company said.
The solutions are 802.11-compliant and use wireless local area network (WLAN) and WAN equipment from Proxim Inc., combined with clustered servers from Sun Microsystems Inc., all of which integrate with Inter.net’s network.
Currently, Inter.net has approximately 65,000 customers in Montreal, which is where the Canadian hot spot service will initially be offered to customers. It will eventually be rolled out to other cities across Canada, said Clovis Lacerda, general manager for Inter.net in Reston, Va.
The company said it will establish roaming agreements with Wi-Fi operators in Canada and across the globe. A telco could either purchase the wireless solutions outright or enter into a partnership whereby it could use some of its own infrastructure combined with Inter.net’s to establish a hot spot.
Inter.net will also sell its solutions directly to ISPs which aren’t equipped or ready to launch their own hot spot service.
The hot spot service scales from the small retail environment to the large enterprise but in terms of how the service is deployed, that will depend on the customer’s business strategy.
“It’s going to be a plug-and-play type of solution. It’s a matter of how the hot spot owner will base their business case to the end customer, whether they are going to be selling the Wi-Fi access or offering it for free as a value-add to their existing product line,” Lacerda said.
Last year, incumbent carriers Bell Canada Ltd. and Telus Corp. launched their own Wi-Fi services, and they will both serve as competition to Inter.net’s entry into the Canadian market.
The Montreal-based company is online at www.ca.inter.net.
