Wireless Internet HotspotsPh: 0861-BUTTON

(0861-288866)

Monday, December 31, 2007

Happy New Year

To all our customers, suppliers and friends, wishing you happy and prosperous 2008!

Thank-you for your support

At RedButton we are looking forward to a year in which we bring even more value to our customers, not only in terms of the quality and convenience of our offering, but also in terms of an exciting new product line. Thank-you for your support in 2007 and we are looking forward to serving you in 2008.

New trends?

When it comes to Wi-Fi in 2008, we'll no doubt continue to see it becoming more ubiquitous. For example have you heard of the Toyota A-Bat? It's a hybrid concept vehicle that appears to sport an internal Wi-Fi access point, all you'd need is some backbone technology (e.g. 3G, WiMAX) to turn your A-Bat into your private local area network or mobile hotspot. Lets see if 2008 will see such vehicles going into production.

Special mention

In particular we would like to extend our best wishes to all WAPA members with regards to the license conversion process at ICASA. WAPA is an a set of backbone (technically called wide area network) wireless Internet service providers who have for many years provided Internet services to end-users and service providers such as ourselves. In a nutshell, 2008 should be the year in which most WAPA members will know whether they will be licensed to provide backbone Internet connections.

To delve into further detail, WAPA members, who all have VANS licenses, have been informed that their licenses are to be converted to a type of license (ECS) that is not sufficient for providing backbone Internet connections, an ECNS license will be required. ICASA, the communications authority of South Africa, recently announced that it

has decided that VANs will in the first instance be converted to ECS and that a competitive process will be followed in respect of granting VANS the right to acquire ECNS as per the Ministerial Directive. An Invitation To Apply (ITA) to this effect will be issued in January 2008. Consequently a separate matrix for VANS (ECNS applications) will be published once interested parties have responded to the ITA and submissions have been evaluated. The Authority will hold public hearings in March 2008 in order to fast track this process

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

View From The Top - Marking 2 Years of Service at The Tudor Hotel

The Tudor Hotel, primely situated in Cape Town's historic Greenmarket Square, is the oldest hotel in Cape Town and probably one of the oldest in South Africa. It is also RedButton's first client with the initial installation having taken place two years ago in December 2005.

The photo below is a great view of Greenmarket square, taken from the top of The Tudor Hotel. Credit for the photo goes to Neal Tosefsky, outbound logistics manager at RedButton.



As an aside, with the hotel having been built in 1870, that means we've had it covered for 2 years of its 137 year life span. Since we're on history and since 2 out of 137 doesn't sound that great let's try to put the 2 year span in context.

The Internet became commercially available in South Africa in the mid 90s with the Internet Service Providers' Association being formed in 1996. Although WiFi was born in 1991, broadband only truly became available in South Africa in early 2003 with Telkom releasing ADSL. So effectively we've had the Tudor Hotel covered for 2 out of 5 years possible years, a statement that tells a different story.

To this day the Tudor continues to enjoy the high service levels, competent customer support and ongoing system improvements that have established RedButton as the leading hotspot service provider in South Africa.