When I take training for “the brand that shall not be named”, voucher-based WiFi always gets a big vote of confidence from the students.
Charging customers for WiFi isn’t a big thing here but having the ability to create vouchers with up/download speed restrictions and byte limit/quota is great for those with data caps on their internet (AirBnB etc).
Also having the ability for users to add hotspot operators who only have access to vouchers/client authentication but not network/AP settings would be great too.
I’d be interested in this as well and a feature to be able to collect valid email addresses for vouchers to keep track of possible usage or marketing contacts in exchange for usage of free internet.
Thanks for the feedback @SimonNZ91 and @SonNgo! This is a feature we plan on supporting at some point but to be honest we haven’t seen or heard a lot of demand for the feature up to this point. So if there are others that feel this would be an important addition as well let us know so that we can properly prioritize it. There are also other ways that emails can be harvested (e.g. external portals) but if this is a feature that there is still a lot of demand for we definitely would like to know.
Hello @Alta-Dallin. This features seems to me very important, since in Mexico it is really common to use vouchers in hotspot as a authentication method. Mainly for hotels, restaurants, schools and public areas, this is a must have in order to be success in Mexico´s market. If you could add the option to save an email for marketing purposes it would be great, since clients ask for it a lot.
Thanks for the feedback @Carlos_Chavez! This helps a lot. We will work on getting this feature properly prioritized on our roadmap. CC @Alta-Jeff@Alta-Chase
Just wanted to add for priority purposes, that I’m very interested in the feature to collect emails in exchange for obtaining access to the Network. Would also be great to optionally collect other fields like Name, Phone Number, etc. (custom field support would be amazing).
I used voucher authentication in quite a bit with my WiFi setup/installtions in the Phil. This feature would make my installations, easier and more manageable in terms of access and data traffic using Alta Labs. Please include this to your priority list of new features.
I would like to offer my input on the Hotspot Voucher System. Considering its high demand in the UAE market, I believe adding this feature would be highly advantageous.
Proposed Key Features:
1/Centralized Guest Management:
Centralized management of guest profiles across multiple sites.
2/Voucher Generation:
Capability to generate bulk coupons with customizable validity and data/bandwidth limits.
3/API Integration:
Integration with hotel PMS systems for seamless voucher generation and guest authentication.
4/Guest Analytics:
Monitoring guest analytics with report generation capabilities.
Technically speaking the Access Point is just a hardware device.
Vouchers or FreeRadius-like solutions are really a software thing not a hardware item.
I don’t disagree that having less hardware is an attractive item to support these type of solutions.
The concern I have is this can be done with some type of “controller” such as raspberry pi or a low powered server (with some open source software). The issue is there no direct package that presents it as a solution for the end user to “plug” it into their network to use it.
Therefore adding it as a bundle to a piece of hardware whose main goal is to direct WiFi packets seems a little much.
Alta has a cloud controller and a local controller now. This type of feature is going to cause difficulties because
The community who wants to use a local controller will ask more features to allow them to manage these type of services within their own infrastructure. The ask from this community is to let them manage who can connect, what device can be allowed, when it will be allowed, etc. These are items probably already solved within these environment.
This community who uses the cloud controller (manage.alta.inc) do not want to manage this separate and want Alta to manage it.
If Alta is trying to make a controller that can serve both communities, then this is going to be a hard feature to support.
Technically I believe this feature is not really a wifi thing. I believe it is would be categorized as something that would be similar to a firewall solution.
If I look at the Alta Switches feature set and the Alta Access Point feature set are not necessary able to be the similar device to a firewall that you would have to defend a whole network.
