MrFlibble:
The relative ease of setting up a fake access point to obtain people’s paypal login info using man-in-the-middle attacks makes it too risky.
Hi MrFlibble
Don’t really want to get dragged into a dialogue on this sort of issue, there’s enough security experts in the banks etc dealing with it, but this is not as easy as it was made out to be on a certain tv program. Makes good television but amongst many other difficulties for the scammer it means that he has to be broadcasting a stronger wi-fi signal, with the same SSID, from his laptop than the one transmitted by the legal hotspot. Might be possible in a hotel lobby if you’re sitting right next to the target but I seriously doubt the feasibilty in a truck stop parking area. Even if this was done we would become aware of the situation and notify the authorities. It’s actually a very good reason for only using professional hotspots rather than a standard unsecured wireless router.
By the way your idea of offering a free trial is pretty much what we’ve been suggesting to some truck stops. I don’t think their reluctance has anything to do with money I think it’s just that they can’t be bothered to provide the service.
Sorry to display my ignorance but how many hours does the average driver spend at an overnight truckstop? Do you tend to arrive late night and leave early morning or can it be up to 12 hours for example?
Thanks / scriv
its minimum 9 hours but depends on the workload etc then its a 45 minute break during your work period . some of the foreign drivers who may also use it can be around for a couple of days.
Thanks for that Gez. The picture I’m beginning to get is to price at around £1.50 for a 1 day [24 hour] access at major truck stops where we can get the volume and to give drivers the option of either buying access codes with the parking ticket or online. We could probably give the site a small commission on tickets sold with the parking. That way they’d not only be offering a service at no cost to themselves but making a cut as well.
Next step is to find a guinea pig, I was thinking of trying the new one at West Thurrock? Any other suggestions welcome.
Thanks / scriv
Hello scriv. Can i suggest ashford truckstop?
They already have internet access through two painfully slow pcs near the restaurant but wi-fi in the lorry park would be much better Karens the manager and Richards the main man i believe.
Cheers- jon
given that we dont want to pay but will have too
i would like to take my alconbury minutes to say west thurrock
knowing that if you and the dragon man carved the job up between you we would get roll over time and wouldnt need a card for every site
Hi Hitch
Didn’t quite get the dragon man bit but the general idea of roaming between hotspots is a good one! Obviously it would be a bit pointless until we had a number of sites installed round the country but it would be fairly easy to introduce a monthly roaming account for regular users once it was established.
I for one would use your wifi hot-spots at £1.50 per day, but I don’t think you will find it easy to sell it to truck stops as they need nothing to get us to park with them due to very limited parking in the UK, so have little or no incentive to take on the wifi status. I wish you luck with your idea, and hopefully in the near future I will have the benefit of your service. IMHO a daily rate would be the most used, with a discount for longer term “contract” rates for those who park in the same places on a regular basis
he was just their cos hes known but any competition more operators mean more cards more sites could mean more cost if we had to buy from every site and didnt use all our capacity on a particular visit
Options seem to be either pay as you go or a yearly subscription. I think pay as you go seems best but also to be able to take unused minutes to another place. the thought is there and would benifit most drivers on the road who use a lappy and using this and skype you get to phone home free and use vidieo see them as well.
I think we as drivers should support this as a help to us or we lose it thru lack of support.
Think of the possibilities we csn see the kids from anywhere in the world.
Thanks for the replies. From my limited experience so far talking to truck stops I think you’re right. We have exactly the same problem in our existing markets, moble homes and narrow boats. The site owners have too much demand for their facilities and therefor no real incentive to improve them. The mobile home industry is beginning to improve, as site owners realise if they don’t provide the things people want they’ll go elsewhere, but in reality that’s only because demand has fallen for sited mobile homes.
Just to clarify my thinking on the PAYG vs subscription issue. Our policy is to be completely payg and aimed at casual use. We normally sell tickets in 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week or 30 day values. The 1 hour ones are online time related ie you can logon for 5 minutes, logout and keep the remaining 55. the rest are date related so you get 1 calender day from the time you first use it. For this industry I was thinking the day tickets would be most appropriate as it would last for the time you were parked up not for roaming between parks. I was thinking long term when more sites were in place to do a 30 day discounted ticket for regular users but it would still effectively be PAYG. Hope that clarifies the system.
l8r / scriv
Well sounds good,but please keep us informed in here so we know when and where we can get online and also it will be free publicity for you because im sure this will spread fast by word of mouth. good luck.
I was talking yesterday to Mr Jenkinson owner of Penrith truckstop about this and telling how the truckstops in Germany do it usually either part of t mobile or other networks which is charged to my BTopenzone account and its not expensive he seemed interested and was going to contact BT about this.
As usual we are years behind every one else but now more and more msa,s are getting wifi now but only in the building so you go and buy something wheh you go in to use the service
I have seen the wifis abroad cover the whole truck park so it can be done.
klunk/■■■■■■■■
I was talking yesterday to Mr Jenkinson owner of Penrith truckstop about this and telling how the truckstops in Germany do it usually either part of t mobile or other networks which is charged to my BTopenzone account and its not expensive he seemed interested and was going to contact BT about this.
I’ve tried to stay away from direct brand name advertising on this thread but if someone’s determined to plug one of my corporate competitors I guess I have to respond just a little
BTOpenzone would probably be a reasonable facility at truck stops for any driver who already has BT Broadband at home or an Openzone account. Even then you pay £5 per month for the first 500 mins and then 10p a minute. For anyone else the casual access rate is £6.00 per hour. In the UK the equipment costs the site around £200 plus vat and only covers the same area as a domestic wireless router ie no parking area coverage. The site has to pay for the incoming business broadband at around £28 per month plus vat. All of these costs are quoted on the Openzone website.
I think the solution we intend to propose is £1.50 for a 12 or 24 hour overnight period [haven’t decided which yet] and, eventually, unlimited roaming rates around £12 per month. The installation will cost the site nothing and they will make a cut on physical card sales ie cards not sold online. We will supply the dedicated broadband feed on a suitable telephone line, provided by the site. Oh and by the way we would provide effective coverage of the parking area because if we don’t we won’t recoup our investment!
I’ll leave it with you which idea would be better to plug with Mr Jenkinson
Brief foray into advertising over Mr Moderator, sorry about that!
scriv:
Just to clarify my thinking on the PAYG vs subscription issue. Our policy is to be completely payg and aimed at casual use. We normally sell tickets in 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week or 30 day values. The 1 hour ones are online time related ie you can logon for 5 minutes, logout and keep the remaining 55. the rest are date related so you get 1 calender day from the time you first use it. For this industry I was thinking the day tickets would be most appropriate as it would last for the time you were parked up not for roaming between parks. I was thinking long term when more sites were in place to do a 30 day discounted ticket for regular users but it would still effectively be PAYG. Hope that clarifies the system.
l8r / scriv
The problem I see with your one day ticket being date based is that most truckers would be parking up around 6 - 8pm on day one and then leaving the truckstop around 5 - 6 am on the next. Based on this you may be best to look at doing a 4 or 6 hour time based ticket for truckers to allow them to get the most from the access.
Peronsally I would be happy to pay a monthly fee of around £20 if the network was big enough that I actually had a good chance of parking at a truckstop or motorway service area with access I could use, if avaliability was limited then the time based idea has to be better but I would want to see the time purchased be usable at any location on your network not just the location of purchase as you would soon find you had dozens of part used credits or lots of locations and that would not please me.
I don’t know how your present system works but it would be an idea to look at having people sign up for an account and then top up that account allowing them to log on at any location and offer each location a % based on their useage each month and good way to get them to promote the service at their location further helping the network.
Good points. I think I need to clarify the difference between date based and time based tickets.
A time based ticket allows the user a period of Internet access ie 60 minutes. They can log off for example after 5 minutes and keep 55 minutes for their next visit. Our time based tickets are indefinite so you could do this for as long as you want until the time runs out. Other companies have different policies. BT for example specify that a 60 minute ticket must be used in a 24 hour period from first logon or you lose the balance. This effectively makes theirs a mixture of time and date based.
Date based tickets last for a period of time whether you logoff or not. For example if you have a day ticket it’s validity willl last for 24 hours from first logon whether you actually use 5 minutes or 24 hours.
If I’m totally honest all tickets cost us, and any other company, exactly the same to set up whether they’re time or date based so it’s a marketing issue what you charge for them together with the payback requirement on equipment…
Hope that clarifies the charging system?
My feeling from the feedback so far would be to go with a date based 12 or 24 hour ticket, the cost to us is the same but from your information 12 hour would be better, that expires 12 hours after first logon. That way there wouldn’t be any credit carried over.
There’s not really any point looking at roaming issues at the moment as there’s no network yet. I’m hoping that once we install the first truck stop you guys will spread the word and others will join the network. I was using the figure of £12 as a probable level when and if we get to that happy situation!
For monthly accounts the “top up” situation doesn’t really apply as the account would be for unlimited access during the 30 day period. You would just buy a new ticket at any participating truckstop, or online, when it ran out.
Very interesting, thanks Longwayround. The website’s a bit short on tech info but it looks like they’re load balancing the network connections through multiple cell phone companies to achieve the data rate. I’m not sure if that’s feasible on the existing mobile phone networks in the UK. I know there is a simlar idea operating on some UK trains at the moment using T Mobile but the feedback, in terms of performance, has not been very good.
Out of interest what is the situation regarding WI-FI hotspots at truckstops in the States? Do most of them have one?
