Liveport Corporation, a leading provider of wireless Internet services for the North American hospitality industry, announced today that they have installed wireless Internet systems in 100 hotels since switching to Open-Mesh devices last year.
Liveport transitioned from Meraki devices to develop technology specific to the hospitality market and realize significant cost savings. The transition from has been faster and smoother than anticipated, noted Gerry Bakker, Liveport’s President.
“We like the way the Open-Mesh units just work,” said Bakker. “We installed several hundred hotels through Canada and the U.S.. The Meraki units worked, but due to higher pricing, lower reliability and certain missing features in their cloud controller, we switched to Open-Mesh for new installations. The results have far surpassed our expectations.”
In addition to using Open-Mesh hardware for new installations, Liveport has been upgrading hotels running Meraki to new Open-Mesh technology, resulting in significant cost savings for ongoing service and support.
Liveport is using the Open-Mesh Professional Series router. The devices include a hardware watchdog circuit that makes the units extremely reliable even in installations with poor AC power that would lockup other Wi-Fi equipment. It also uses the Open-Mesh Wall Plug Enclosures so access points can securely plug-into a standard power outlet.
“We like that these support standard and decora plugs, leave an outlet free and hide the router, power supply and antenna,” added Bakker. “There are no blinking lights to distract hotel guests or fancy logos that make them targets for theft.”
Open-Mesh routers include the Open-Mesh Cloud Controller, a hosted network controller that automatically configures all access points. Features include custom SSIDs for both the public and private networks, bandwidth throttling, real-time and daily summary notices of any issues, and over a dozen landing page templates and an easy WYSIWYG editor.
“The Open-Mesh Cloud Controller gives us greater flexibility in the landing page design, which our customers love,” said Bakker. “We also include reports and even Google maps into web sites that provide customers with real-time data on their installation.”
“We are very pleased with Liveport’s successful transition to Open-Mesh”, says Michael Burmeister-Brown, President of Open-Mesh, Inc. “We worked with Liveport for several months to optimize the product for the hospitality industry and their advice and suggestions have been invaluable.”
“The Professional Series access points prove that robust managed Wi-Fi systems can be affordable for any hotel,” added Burmeister-Brown.
“No one knows this business better than Liveport and we highly recommend that hotels looking for a fast, reliable wireless solution contact Liveport to see just how inexpensive and hassle-free Wi-Fi can be,” said Burmeister-Brown.
