Provision of free or paid-for Wi-Fi access across your public service vehicle fleet involves more than simply installing a router. We offer the following services for bus & coach operators, ranging from simply facilitating your own remote management of your router estate through to a complete hotspot management service including daily proactive monitoring of hotspot health.
The services on this page all relate to – and require – the IBR900 router. Sections on this page:
NetCloud Manager
Enhanced Hotspot Service
Web Content Filtering
Monitoring & Remote Maintenance Service
Mobile Data Packages (SIM cards)
NetCloud Manager
NetCloud Manager allows remote configuration and troubleshooting of your router estate.
NetCloud Manager is a cloud management service for the IBR900 router. It enables you – or us if you choose our Monitoring & Remote Maintenance Service as detailed below – to remotely monitor, configure and troubleshoot your routers “over the air”. NetCloud Manager is an invaluable tool for ongoing management of your router estate, and drastically reduces the frequency of on-site visits required in the event of problems or configuration changes needing to be made. A range of alerts can be configured, including notifying you of connectivity issues.
Pricing
NetCloud Manager comes free for 1 year with the IBR900 – as long as the offer is taken up at the time of purchase. Thereafter NetCloud Manager is a paid-for service requiring a small annual subscription charge per router. Please contact us for details.
Enhanced Hotspot Service (EHS)
EHS provides a range of advanced hotspot features.
The IBR900 router supports a range of “basic” hotspot / captive portal features as standard, as detailed on its product page.
Our Enhanced Hotspot Service (EHS) provides the following additional benefits:
- Limit the absolute amount of data (not just the bandwidth) that each Wi-Fi client can download. This is particularly useful for helping to prevent excessive data usage.
- Fully limit the duration that each Wi-Fi client can connect for (after the limit expires the device in question cannot re-connect until a configurable time-out period has expired)
- Capture customer contact details (e.g. email address, phone numbers, etc.) before granting internet access. An API allows this data to be sent to third party applications such as Mailchimp.
- Apply your own branding to the hotspot login page which all Wi-Fi users see
- Offer pay-per-use packages – either to all users or only to those who have exceeded time or traffic limits.
- Allow users to login using vouchers
- Optionally apply per-user data caps and time limits collectively across the whole fleet (e.g. if a user exceeds their data limit on one bus and then jumps onto another bus they would still be blocked, or requested to pay for further use).
- Blacklist individual users by MAC address across the whole fleet
- Cloud-based management portal allows you to make instant changes to Wi-Fi hotspot behaviour across your fleet.
- Detailed reporting and statistics including the number of sessions, user data, and traffic consumption by user or router.
Pricing
EHS is a paid-for service requiring a small monthly subscription charge per router. Pricing is subject to a fair usage policy whereby the number of individual user logins per month remains within an agreed limit.
Although NetCloud Manager is not technically required for EHS to operate, we strongly recommend that you also have a NetCloud Manager subscription for each router.
Each router needs to be configured to work with EHS, which is a non-trivial process. For this reason there is an initial one-off charge per router for setting up EHS.
Please contact us for details.
Web Content Filtering
Block access to malicious, inappropriate or copyright-infringing websites
The IBR900 supports an advanced, cloud-based web content filtering and security solution which enforces policies at the DNS layer to prevent your Wi-Fi hotspot users from accessing malicious websites, downloading copyrighted material or viewing inappropriate content from your network.
Filtering is administered from a cloud-managed dashboard which makes it easy to apply policy settings to specific routers, or your entire fleet, with just a few clicks. Over 60 filtering categories are available, as well as custom allow or block lists, to ensure that your hotspot users only view appropriate content that is consistent with your brand.
Pricing
Web Content Filtering is a paid-for service requiring an annual subscription charge per router. Please contact us for details.
Monitoring & Remote Maintenance Service (MRMS)
Let us take care of the day-to-day management of your hotspots.
Our MRMS service is designed for bus & coach operators who do not wish to get involved in the day-to-day management of their router estate, and simply want a hands-off hotspot solution which is closely monitored to ensure proper functionality.
MRMS is a manual and non-automated service which we carry out at a frequency agreed with you (normally daily). The main component of MRMS involves an In-CarPC technician remotely logging into your NetCloud Manager (and EHS, if applicable) accounts and verifying that each router is performing correctly, by examining several unique parameters.
In the event of any router being identified as potentially non-functioning the issue is initially remotely diagnosed by us, with no involvement required by you at this stage.
If remote diagnosis and troubleshooting fails to resolve the problem then we talk to you. Often the problem will be due to an external event (e.g. the vehicle in question being out of service), in which case no further action needs to be taken.
In the unlikely event of a hardware problem we liaise with you to resolve the problem. If basic checks don’t work, the router in question can be hot-swapped with a spare device that you already have (which we remotely configure to match the previously installed router).
Regular status reports are provided to you – including when all routers are working correctly. From the point of view of you – the bus or coach operator – MRMS gives you complete peace of mind that your hotspots are all working correctly, and the technical resources to resolve any issues that occur.
Pricing
Pricing for MRMS is based on several factors, including the size of your fleet and the frequency of our checks. MRMS requires you to have a NetCloud Manager subscription to allow us to access the routers remotely. Please contact us to discuss your requirements.
Mobile Data Packages (SIM Cards)
Specialist M2M data packages with an aggregated data allowance.
We offer a range of aggregated data packages from 1 GB up to 100’s of GB per SIM card. Data aggregation means that all of your SIM cards share a common pool of data, so there is no penalty if some SIMs exceed their monthly allowance – as long as the total data usage across all your SIM cards is within the agreed limit.
Click here for more information about our mobile data packages, or just contact us.