We often experience customers reaching out seeking the cheapest and most affordable way to introduce or upgrade an old wireless network that desperately needs attention. In 2019, this can be a problematic, dangerous approach. We invest significant time and effort to educate potential customers about the importance of quality wifi network infrastructure with hope that they learn the easy way why this is so important. There are a few facets to this...
Why for Businesses?
For the business owner, IT Manager, or System Integrators the challenge is working to be cost effective while also providing the operation with a system that is designed to fit with their business needs. This applies when it is used it for staff connectivity, inventory management (barcode scanning tasks), surveillance, or to support other infrastructure at the facility that needs to function optimally while connected wirelessly. This trend continues to evolve from what began with basic network printers and VOIP systems and now includes a wide variety of additional technologies. Some of which may only have the option to connect using wifi as the primary connection to the network for successful functionality. Suspect wifi performance typically hinders the additional investment that's been spent on peripheral technologies, increasing time for troubleshooting and problem solving exponentially.
Why for the Hospitality Industry?
Well, we hope that this one is obviously to most readers, but there's still many learning what "great wifi" is versus what they may or may not have had experience with. WiFi has quickly become the determining factor for many guests when making a choice for accommodations for both business and personal endeavours. Visitors are no longer accepting just piggybacking on their personal data via cellular providers and have very high expectations. Keeping this at the forefront, cutting corners to save what money will be quickly lost losing guests to do the minimal possible to provide guest wifi is a very dangerous approach. If you're in the hospitality industry and provide guest wifi, it should be a top priority to provide a high quality user experience mitigating the risk of lost revenues.
If you don't take wifi seriously, what's the outcome?
We've covered this somewhat already, but the outcomes are varying depending on the intended use of wifi. However, businesses rely on it for productivity, functionality, and security. In many cases it's for inventory management, order production, communication using VOIP systems, or IP surveillance systems. Putting bad fuel in the engine that drives these technologies will impact the bottom line eventually, especially as a greater need for quality wifi continues to grow.
For guest wifi service, the impact is much greater. Offering poor wifi and luring guests with it will result in poor reviews and lower visitor retention and loyalty. The internet has become too powerful to hide from this and the eventual revenue loss will be detrimental profits for hospitality businesses. Enough said!
How can you achieve great wifi connectivity?
1. Make sure your internet service can support your client usage at the peak times of usage.
2. Don't try to use consumer grade, off the shelf products that are both cumbersome to configure and design properly. There are many examples of this, but if an "enterprise grade" WiFi access point is less than $300, it's not likely a good choice.
3. Ask about proper design for the system and understand the steps to having this created using industry standard engineering tools such as Ekahau. Just guessing where access point locations should be (especially with outdoor and larger facilities) is not recommended for a number of reasons inclusive of potential interference, signal strength inhibitors, and facility construction.
4. Ask potential solution providers about their guarantees for "coverage assurance" and or performance to provide you with the confidence it will perform as you expected.
5. Learn about what hardware is available and make comparisons versus competitive options.
6. Work with us as we have extensive successful experience with many varying applications for high performance wifi.
We hope you don't have to re-invest in your network technologies as a result of a subpar system integration and would love to support you to avoid such an experience!
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