Ever wondered where all your bandwidth is disappearing to? Does it leave you frustrated that your Internet credit finishes and you don’t even know why or how fast it is being used up? Managing and monitoring your Internet bandwidth is as important as monitoring your bank or cellphone account. What is important is that you know as much as you can about the technology/system you are using and are able to make the most of it.

The following are methods that can be used to monitor your credit and ensure that you get more bang for your buck when surfing. There are numerous  ways in which bandwidth is consumed without you ever noticing. What is important is that you are aware of potential areas in which bandwidth can be consumed.

Here are but a few tips on how to reduce and monitor your bandwidth consumption:

• Watch your pop up window: Most ISP’s offer ways in which you can monitor your data consumption, this allows you to track your purchased bundle and use it more effectively. At RedButton we provide you with a status page which automatically updates with information on your surfing session every 2 minutes.

• Be aware of Automatic updates: For both your operating system as well as your web browser updates. By turning this option off you have the ability to decide what is important to update and what’s not. Normally when your device is not connected to any internet your updates gets stored and only runs once its connected. These updates if not connected for a period can end up downloading 300MB – 500MB of updates.

• Video Streaming: Video files use data and this is by far the largest consumer of bandwidth in public WiFi spcaes. So it’s always advisable to reduce the amount of video’s viewed per session. Also, there is the quality of the video. The resolution of the video determines the amount of data consumed. YouTube offers options to reduce the pixels of the video ranging between: 240p and 720p (HD).

• Log-in to the RedButton Account Manager and view your recent usage history. This will show you what sort of data you are really consuming.

HAPPY SURFING!

Everyone is different! That is what makes our world a special place. But we all have different needs, so why should you not be able to purchase Internet credit that is more aligned to your specific requirements.

Well, wait no more! RedButton has a range of new product options to better suit your unique requirements.

There are three categories of credits available, and each appeals to a different type of user. These products are known as:

1) The Daily Dose (24 hour expiring credit)
2) The Month Mate (31 day expiring credit)
3) The Safe Surfer (12 month expiring credit)

Many users have approached us over the years and asked us for better rates or more bonus credits on each of their purchases. Many users also told us that they don’t care if credit was non-expiring or that it lasted forever. What ALL users wanted was more flexible product options as well as additional bonus credits. Well, that is what we are happy to now give to you!

The Daily Dose – targeted at our user who knows exactly how much credit they use and who is looking for maximum bonus credits on purchases
The Month Mate – targeted at our user who is not really sure of how much they want to use and is looking for decent bonus credits
The Safe Surfer – targeted at our user who has no idea what their usage requirements are and would like to play it safe by not having credits expire too soon

So there you go. Thank you innovation! Thank you advances in technology! Thank you to the RedButton development team.

WE do the technology. YOU do the surfing!

Next up, purely time based product options.

Enjoy your purchases.

Happy Surfing!

What is the benefit of this you ask? Well, you are now able to see what usage you will have left on a voucher!

There are two ways in which a voucher can be used:
1) Through your user account – voucher credits can be redeemed/added to your user account
2) Without a user account – You can surf by logging-in to the internet by simply using the voucher number provided

The challenge is that should you use a voucher as per option 2 above then you might not know what the status of a voucher is once you have finished surfing.

Well this is a problem no more!

Simply enter the voucher number in the specified place on your login page and you will know how many credits are left. Remember you can always still redeem this voucher and add any left over credits to your user account.

We do recommend however that you redeem a voucher by adding it to an existing account as this will enable you to check up and track your usage history.

Happy surfing!

While we at RedButton create products that enable people to connect to information efficiently, RedButton is mostly reliant on the people and venues who use it. Without you and the connections you make, the products we create wouldn’t have much meaning. So we feel fortunate to have all of you with us. To express our appreciation, we are launching a competition to thank you, our loyal patrons for carrying the RedButton flag till today with awesome prizes up for grabs. (Competition details will follow shortly – click here to subscribe and be notified when the competition is announced)

The culture of the Internet has also changed pretty dramatically over the past five years and RedButton has offered a safe and trusted environment for people to browse online at over 400 venues. As we celebrate RedButton’s 5th birthday, we continue to work hard to evolve RedButton and make it as simple as possible to use, communicate and understand.

Stats show a major increase in Internet use Globally and more importantly in South Africa. The penetration rate will reach about 20% by 2013 and by 2018 more than 33% of South Africans WILL have internet access. All this growth coupled with the revolution of social media and mobile technology points to an ever increasing use of internet data by both business and the consumer. Keeping up with bandwidth is therefore challenging and we are finding that 65% of our networks is being used for social networking, while use of video streaming services like YouTube have skyrocketed. Data usage patterns continue to evolve and based on relatively recent usage statistics, it is clear that bandwidth requirements will not diminish over time. Consider this:

• There has been significant increases both in the number of social networkers and bloggers uploading videos, and also the number of active internet users watching audio-visual content
• About 25% of 2 million active internet users in South Africa have uploaded video’s to a video sharing site
• YouTube’s video’s average between 3 and 6min/video and a average size per video is 12MB.
• 76% of social network users, upload photos

There is a general consensus in the Hospitality industry that foreign visitors to South Africa expect a completely FREE INTERNET service (not a free 10, 20MB). Unfortunately, in South Africa, this FREE Internet usually (not always) comes at the cost of speed and security. Studies continue to show us that price is only one of the important factors when customers judge an Internet service. According to surveys conducted in America and Europe, price generally ranks third or fourth behind ease of use, speed and security. Therefore, venues that focus only on FREE INTERNET at the expense of other qualities (especially speed), is at high risk of losing future business. So, the challenge for South African Hospitality businesses is to both have the ability to control expenses and to meet the expectations of the clients.

Spring has sprung and with the new season comes change! A fresh, clean and much welcomed change!

RedButton is proud to announce the launch of its new website and corporate identity. The organisation has been through some restructuring of late and its image and brand are following suit to further solidify the company’s vision of becoming the leading provider of convenient and quality wireless Internet services

Jalal Ghiassi-Razavi, managing director of RedButton, is quoted as saying “This is an exciting time for RedButton as the company is maturing from a start-up player to a key industry defining player. A player that is solely focused on providing wireless Internet services and solutions that address a unique set of customer needs”. Ghiassi-Razavi goes on to state “The new brand and image that the company portrays is crucial to the changing maturity of the organization and shows that RedButton is moving in the right direction. The old website and logo have served us well, but like all things, it needed to change and adapt to the now, it needed to adapt and be ready for tomorrow” he said.

One of the key goals of the new website is to better inform potential clients, businesses and customers as to relevant information pertaining to RedButton’s hotspot solutions and services. We believe that this has been achieved and the new highly graphical interface allows us to grab our customers attention, thereby diverting them to whatever section of the website we require. This is a useful tool which is also very pleasing to the eye.

Additional features include the addition of a number of different social media links to the website. This was done in an effort to stay in touch with the most important component of our business, our customers. Not only can customers now access our services and information through our website but users they can also follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and through our blog. Maintaining up to the minute news, highlights and staying up to date on announcements can now very easily be achieved. The nature of the social mediums also allow our customers to be in contact with us, letting us know of any problems, service issues or challenges that they face. This will enable us to better serve our clients needs while holding us to our high quality of service standards.

In addition to the new social media links, RedButton has added a great mapping tool that allows you to view where our hotspots are located and what sort of services are available at these locations. The mapping tool also seperates and clearly identifies the hotspots that offer prepaid Internet and those that offer Free Internet services.

RedButton is celebrating the launch of the new website and logo by offering end-users the chance to win some fantastic prizes in our Competition. Click here for further details and the opportunity to win a netbook, a helicopter flip for two, an external hard-drive or some RedButton vouchers.

Check out the new site by going to RedButton.co.za

Out with the old, in with the new

“Free WiFi: Automatic”, as the name alludes to, allows venues to automatically provide a set amount of wireless Internet to its clients. This is done automatically and provides a hassle-free way of providing Internet access to end-users. The “Free WiFi: Controlled” solution allows venues to control to who and when free WiFi access is provided. This is achieved through the management of Free WiFi vouchers. Each of the solutions has its own benefits and uses and the selection their-of depends on what the venue is looking to achieve given its unique set-up and requirements.

RedButton’s Managing Director, Jalal Ghiassi-Razavi, was noted as saying that “Each venue within the hospitality sector has a unique need when it comes to wireless Internet hotspots services and solutions and the product options that were previously available in the market were not adequately suited to meet each venues unique needs”. Mr Ghiassi-Razavi goes on to state “The 20 new options in the Free WiFi: Automatic solution combined with the 16 new options in the Free WiFi: Controlled solution should enable all our clients to be completely satisfied with the WiFi offering that they provide from their venue”.

RedButton is proud to launch these two new products and options and Mr Ghiassi-Razavi was quoted as saying “This once again shows that RedButton is at the forefront of product development in the WiFi Hotspot provision space”. He goes on to say “RedButton is committed to giving our customers what they are looking for and we will continue to be the leading provider of convenient and quality wireless Internet”.

For further information on the new products and their options please visit RedButton at www.redbutton.co.za

We pride ourselve on using the latest most up to date stable technology. For example, we are now using the latest major version of the FreeRADIUS server, namely Version 2. This offers us unrivaled levels of stability and functionality. For those of you who do not know what Radius is, it does three important things:

1. Authentication - are you really who you say are? Authentication attempts to answer this question. Normally a user must have some sort of secret like a password which the authentication can use to answer this question.
2. Authorisation - what can you do? Once you have been authenticated, you now have resources (in our case, Internet usage) that will be assigned. But how much resources can you use, and for how long? Authentication answers this question
3. Accounting - how much of the resource did you use and for how long. Accounting records this information. Please note that the accounting module does not record what sites you go to, it merely records how much data you have used and for how long you have been online for.

In software development, one only upgrades to a new version if there is a bug in the current version, of if the current version will become obsolete (which implies lack of development). In our case, we upgraded due to the latter.

If you are interested in Radius, go to www.freeradius.org to read more about this amazing piece of software.

Have you ever thought to yourself that RedButton Internet is more expensive than some of the other offerings available in the market?  Do you think that there are other more cost effective, convenient and affordable ways of accessing the world wide web?  Does it leave you feeling disgruntled that you are not getting the most value for your money?

What if we were to tell you that our service offering gave you much more than you had bargained for. More than other service offerings, and at a better price with additional convenience and value!  South Africa is very different to the rest of the world in that we are limited in the number of core infrastructure solutions that we can make use of to access the Internet.  As an example, Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) still bill in megabytes rather than in time. This is very different to what is found overseas.

We are slowly getting out of the Telkom monopoly but are still left with very little choice in South Africa as to how to access the Internet.  It is clear that Internet is no longer a nice to have but a necessity and RedButton looks to ensure that this need is fulfilled.

Here are a couple of reasons why we are not as expensive as you think:

Consider the following factors, with RedButton:

• There is no need to purchase any special equipment such as modems, routers or 3G cards
• There is no need to go through a complex process in order to set-up an account
• There is no need to pay a deposit to use the system
• There is no need to sign long term contracts (12/24 months)
• There is no need to cancel any accounts once finished using the service
• There are no reconnection fees
• There is no need to manage/carefully monitor your own wireless account
• There is no need to go through any personal credit checks
• There is no need to pay any monthly account fees or charges
• Credits do not expire (credit lasts 12 months) – credits roll over each month
• Credits can be used at any of our hotspot venues
• You have the flexibility to decide when and where you wish to surf
• You have easy mechanisms to purchase credit (credit card or vouchers)
• You have access to unlimited, unshaped bandwidth

Cost Comparison Example

Lets look at an example. Compare the cost of using a RedButton hotspot (A) to the cost of getting your own home DSL account through Telkom (B):

As you can see in the table above, you would be able to surf over 1 GB of data at a RedButton hotspot before you cover the cost of the Telkom line rental and equipment.  Never mind the fact that the RedButton credit does not expire.  Even more importantly, with your own home Telkom connection, you are required to pay the monthly line rental fees regardless of whether or not you use the service.  The true value of RedButton’s service should now become more apparent. Let us investigate further…

Breakeven Analysis:

In order to show you what sort of value you receive using RedButton Internet we have put together a table highlighting the breakeven points at which it is equally cost effective to use either RedButton or to get your own home ADSL solution.  Any usage less than the values in the table means that it would be beneficial to use RedButton instead of the alternative.

Take for example the service offered on a RedButton hotspot that operates at 30c/mb and compare this to using a Telkom 4Mbps ADSL line.  You would be able to use up to 2,350mb before it becomes worthwhile for you to get your own home ADSL line, any less usage and RedButton would be cheaper.  Never mind the fact that regardless of usage you will pay monthly fees for line and ADSL rental. It is important to note that this calculation negates additional convenience factors such as non expiring credits and the ability to roam at RedButton hotspots.

ISP’s with ridiculously low per GB charges

Even if you find an ISP that charges ridiculously low rates for bandwidth, say R35/GB, you still end up paying more per GB due to the fact that you have monthly line and ADSL rental costs to cover.  See the graph below for an illustration of this.

The fact of the matter is that for your average user, RedButton is far more cost effective (and valuable) than setting up a home DSL account.  Only those users who on average use high data volumes (greater than 3 GB per month) will find value in going on their own.

What about other technologies?

Enough about Telkom, consider the cost of using Neotel, iBurst or even mobile technology solutions such as 3G or Edge.  With most of these services you are required to sign up for a 2 year contract in order to benefit from reasonable bandwidth rates.  If you don’t wish to sign a contract then you will suffer the consequences and have to pay for your bandwidth at higher prices.  Never mind the initial cost (thousands of Rands) that you are required to spend to get the equipment necessary to access these networks.

Example of cost:
Prepaid 3G would cost you R2,000 for 1GB of usage – How scary is that!

How do we do it?

RedButton utilises economies of scale to provide you with value added services that are not only convenient, high quality and affordable but second to none.  What does this mean?  We basically split the cost of the line across a number of different users, therefore making it possible for you to access the net at a fraction of the price of what it would normally cost you.

• RedButton manages all of the long term contracts with suppliers
• RedButton manages and handles any reconnection fees
• RedButton buys all the equipment necessary to get the system running
• RedButton pays the required deposits to activate the systems
• RedButton ensures that the service is up and running to the highest quality and speed
• RedButton ensures speed of Internet by linking multiple ADSL lines together

All you need to do is simply connect to the system and surf!

We use the finest quality backbone infrastructure, billing and networking solutions to bring you everything that you require to access the world wide web.  When you consider all of the benefits and factors of using RedButton and quantify the value that you get by using our service, it is clear that we are a cost effective alternative to accessing the Internet.