News

Partnership to convert payphones to Wi-Fi hotspots

September 22, 2003

PLEASANTON, Calif., and COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Intera Communications Corp. and NetNearU Corp. announced a comprehensive agreement for Intera to target Wi-Fi hotspots at thousands of existing pay phone locations throughout the United States within the next 12 months.

Intera's sister company, NSC, owns or manages more than 38,000 pay phones, according to a news release. Intera has existing relationships with Private Pay Phone Owners (PPOs) that control another 200,000 pay phones and is converting locations to hotspots using the NetNearU wireless hotspot solution with TrackOS, which provides the end user authentication, billing and overall system management.

"Leveraging the valuable real estate occupied by pay phones greatly lowers one of the most significant barriers to developing hotspots: finding suitable locations," said Larry James, chairman and CEO of NetNearU Corp.

The scalability of the carrier-grade NetNearU solution is a primary reason Intera chose to partner with NetNearU, the release said. The TrackOS solution can scale to hundreds of thousands of units. Network operators who order a NetNearU wireless hotspot solution can quickly and easily generate revenue by simply adding a broadband Internet connection.

Additional features include end-user authentication, equipment monitoring, revenue reporting, credit card billing and customer support.

The conversion process is simple; all a PPO has to do is contact Intera. Intera will mentor the PPO on choice of the best sites, supply the equipment, order the DSL if necessary, and help design the Splash Pages.