Free wifi

[secsee1]

A friend of mine runs a small country pub just on the outskirts of a town,
she has a small amount of business people in for lunch on most weekdays but a few of them have mentioned that they would visit more often if they could bring laptops with them and connect to the Internet via a free wifi link.
My question is why does she need to go to the expense of getting a system installed when she already has her own personal wireless router in the pub with virgin media broadband, why cant she just give out the router log in details to customers who want Internet connection?

[ChuckFickens]

1) it's against the terms and conditions of their virgin account.
2) they would be liable for anything downloaded using the connection.
3) security issues... if people have access to their personal wireless network they have access to all the computers on that network.

Sorry, but it's a business, tell them to stop being tight and pay for it to be done properly.

[secsee1]

Thanks for your answers chuck, she is not being tight but just curious as to why she could not use her own connection but you have answered that so I guess she will have to decide if the extra business that it would bring in would warrant the expense of having free wifi installed as none of us have the faintest idea of the cost and presumably monthly charge of running free wifi.

[ChuckFickens]

I should have added a point 4) that government regulations require certain standards to be adhered to.

http://www.zdnet.co.u...conomy-bill-40057470/

The first place I'd suggest they call (if it's a tied pub) is the brewery, they might find that a lot of them have preferred providers for this sort of thing with discounted and/or subsidised rates available. (I think punch, green king and enterprise have preferred suppliers of the top of my head)

If it's a free house (or the brewery can't/won't help) then the cloud is probably the largest provider of public hotspots for this.

http://www.thecloud.net/

[secsee1]

Thanks for your help chuck, and yes it is a free house so no brewery involved.
I found this link which says only a one off payment of £199. & NO monthly fees, it seems a good deal to me but then you may see it different, could you take a look and give an opinion?

http://www.public-wif...MXEiqoCFYUY4QodUxE7yg

[ChuckFickens]

There would be a monthly fee because they'd need a business broadband account with a static IP address (for the content filtration to work), it just the fee wouldn't be payable to the company that provides the wifi access point.... they should also check the terms for whichever broadband account they use to make sure that running a hotspot from it is allowed.

Also from a quick look at the details people who wants to use it would have to register with the company that provides the access point and then they would have access to any of their hotspots for upto 2 hours a day, I can't find any details of how you'd register or if anything like card details would be required though...

[secsee1]

Thank you for your help chuck, I will pass on the link to "the cloud" to my friend as that does seem to be the best & most sensible option.