Monday, July 10, 2006

Three sites up, three to go

So far the Mooloolaba (Parkyn Pde), Sea Breeze and Cotton Tree parks are up and going. Five people have actually signed up and paid for the service. Ten others have signed up and not paid. So 5 out of 15 signups isn't bad considering the service has only been in existence for a matter of weeks and NO promotion has been done.

Support overheads seem quite good in these early stages. I expected at least one call for each signup to get people connected, basically teaching them how to use wireless and the particulars of the service and the Internet. However I was pleasantly surprised to see people connecting and signing up without having to contact us, which is fantastic!

I definitely need marketing materials for each site. The park manages do find it difficult to explain the service to people on top of the rest of what they have to tell guests. The council should have met us halfway with this and worked with us on some material that was deemed suitable by their standards. I think I will take an active role in this side of things and get something out the door.

The wireless coverage of the Cotton Tree park is less than I had originally hoped. It is the largest park and I am only covering the western half. Its bad only partially covering a given location - it creates disparity and people in the non-covered areas become hostile towards the service. I will push forward our plans to install a repeater within the western side of the park. This means rapidly sourcing and testing a compatible Access Point.

Mudjimba and Coolum Parks are troublesome. Coolum requires a bit of fancy wireless work to get DSL distributed to the Hotspot. Mudjimba has a problem where getting DSL to the site is difficult - it may need to be sourced outside the park and beamed in wirelessly.

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