RedButton Starter Kit Unveiled

RedButton has recently begun making our hotspot solution available to selected affiliates via the RedButton Starter Kit - couriered to their doorstep and pre-configured for a rapid plug and play deployment.

Appart from the benefits of the kit contents, these affiliates benefit from RedButton's automated revenue share payouts that fire on the first business day after the end of a billing month. Automated is in bold since as far we know this is a first in the hotspot industry and we are proud of it. Similarly we are also proud of firing off revenue payments for a billing month on the first day of the next month.

So why is automation important? Well we believe it contributes to superior customer service. The more operationally efficient we are the more time we have to spend attending to the needs of our affiliates, end-users and other customers. It's all about service.

So lets go through the contents of the kit. Firstly to mention that the most important aspects are what you don't see, it's in the associated services we provide. We have been operating our own network of hotspots for what is fast approaching two years and this kit and our associated services represents the wealth of experience we have gained. The kit contains:

• A Linksys WRT54GL router flashed with RedButton's cutting edge firmware - firmware is the software that runs on the router and RedButton's firmware has been designed for stability and to set up a RedButton hotspot in a few clicks


• Two 9dBi antennas - optional but in the long run these are a sound investment, the stock antennas on the WRT54GL are not always sufficient


• A batch of seventy flyers and two Wi-Fi Zone stickers - essential marketing material

Finally, here is some feedback we got after we recently couriered a kit to Johannesburg:

Thank you for your help and assistance with the HotSpot.

I’m always very skeptical when implementing new stuff unless I’ve seen it working, but I have to admit, your product is really a breeze to setup and use.

I’m very relieved to see it works so well and are looking forward in setting up as many as possible.

Live From Futurex

This is the RedButton stand at 11:00am 27 September 2007 with Nico de Wet exhibiting. Futurex will be running here at the CTICC untill tomorrow, come join us and enjoy the free Internet on offer.

Corporate social responsibility not only for big cheeses

In cheese terms RedButton is not the biggest around. There are plenty of local ICT companies who could out-cheese us by showing you their monthly spend on paper cups for the water fountain. At the recent Cape IT Initiative (CITI) AGM we were glad to hear that with our recent and upcoming efforts we are increasingly doing what is reserved for le grande fromage. We are giving back not only to shamelessly promote it on our blog, but also because we feel its an obligation to give back to our roots.

Our roots are at the University of Cape Town and collectively we have spent over two decades at the institution, most of that time was spent in the Computer Science department. Those were good times, but they also cost the tax payer a lot of money, as does all tertiary education as the government sponsors a significant portion of the cost. The mentioned cost is not our only reason for a desire to give back, its because its good for the local ICT industry and hence good for everybody. We believe the interaction between academia and industry is shockingly limited in the ICT field and bucking this trend should be a priority for SMEs as well as the larger corporates.

Life is naturally not easy for SMEs and as a startup mere survival is on the top of the agenda. There is little or no time for activities outside of core business. This was evidenced in the Frost & Sullivan presentation at the recent CITI AGM where their research has shown that the larger the company size, the greater the degree of interaction between academia and industry. One might think that is obvious, but it is not necessarily the case, for example there are plenty of universities that incubate high-tech startups. So what have we done? Nothing that will make headlines anywhere else but this blog. We have simply given a colloquium and promoted the virtues of post graduate studies. If those talks contribute to just one student starting or being involved in local companies like Thawte or Mosaic Software (now Postilion) its mission accomplished as far as we are concerned.