Third Party Wi-fi Providers Options

[Texasrvers]

In other threads on this forum I have said that I did not like to use third party or outside vendors to receive Wi-Fi at RV parks. I have always felt they were difficult to use (couldn't get signed up or logged on), were unreliable (weak signal, frequent drops, slow), did not provide good technical service if (when) something went wrong, and were excessively expensive. I much preferred the park to have their own "free" system. (I know they still get their service from an outside provider, but I would not be dealing directly with that provider to set up my service.)

Recently, though, we stayed at a park with an outside wireless provider called thewirelessweb.com which provided excellent service. (And I am in no way affiliated with them.) It was very easy to get started and to buy more time when needed. You could purchase 24 hours at a time, and I think they had a discount for a weekly service, but I'm not sure. The signal was strong and fast, and since we had no problems whatsoever I did not get to experience their technical service--but that's a good thing. They were still a bit on the expensive side, but not outrageous, and we think the the good service was worth the cost. I don't know if the park or the provider sets the fees so it is possible they are either more or less expensive other places.

I know there are still a lot of variables that may have luckily come together to provide our good service this time, but if all third party Wi-Fi providers were this good all the time it would solve a lot of the service problems that we RVers have.

[Parkview]

Hi Tex, et al,

I have not weighed in on the wifi issues lately because this subject has been so cussed and discussed over the last few years that there is little to be said or refuted that hasn’t already been said a number of times. However, the issue of third party providers keeps popping up along with the question of which of them are “good” or “bad”. As a park which has been involved in trying to establish quality wifi service since we opened our park in 2001, we have dealt with three different companies in an attempt to “perfect” the service.

We were disappointed with the results from the first two companies, but I would still not refer to them as bad companies; they spent many hours on site surveys and experimentation on different types of equipment (satellite dishes, radio antennas, repeaters, routers, etc.). The issues were many, topography of the park, bandwidth overuse with the satellite companies, trees, and the occupancy level of the park itself. Both of the companies worked very hard and diligently, but finally gave up. The second company was getting close to the quality of service that we and our customers desired, but ran short of capital and sold out to our current provider.

We finally have a system in place that I am very pleased with as are our customers. Two things happened in addition to the change of ownership of the provider; first, the new company provided us with new site surveys and recommended additional equipment, which I purchased upon their advice; and second, our rural telephone coop finally brought DSL service into our park enabling us to abandon the disappointing satellite service. We currently have three separate directional radio antennas and two omnidirectional repeaters at strategic locations within the park. I have spent over $14,000 dollars in equipment and installation alone over the years to finally get to a system we are proud of.

In addition to the three companies I have dealt with directly, I spoken and negotiated with a number of others over the years, and many of them provide very similar services with slight variations in business models. This finally leads to my main point – any wifi service provided through a third party is only as good as the signal coming into the park and the equipment that the park us willing to purchase in order to feed that signal out to all areas of the park. Incoming satellite service will never equal the speed of incoming DSL service and will be even more disappointing unless the park is willing to purchase upgraded bandwidth packages from the satellite companies, and the additional bandwidth packages are not cheap. Even with DSL, there are different bandwidth and speed packages available for different prices. In other words, you may receive excellent service from Provider A at one park and mediocre to poor service from that same provider at another park. This explains why some comments on this forum will praise certain third party providers while others express disappointment with the same companies.

For us, the advantages of the third party provider are numerous. They provide our customers with real 24/7 tech support and help them with logon problems at any time of the day or night – these logon problems are very often simply a matter of incorrect settings on the customer’s computer, not a problem with our wifi system. Also, they remotely and continuously monitor our system and e-mail us immediately if there is a problem with an antenna, a repeater, or a router at our site. We can usually correct these problems with a reboot, but it is great to receive the timely notification of the problem and the steps we need to take to correct the problem.

We have a rustic campground bordering us on one side, another RV park bordering us on the other side and the Garner State Park, the busiest in Texas, directly across the river from us. A recent review for Garner State Park on this site rated the State Park highly in part because “they even had wifi”. The State Park does not have a wifi system but our system does now reach into some areas of the State park as well as the camps bordering us.

In summary, I believe very strongly in the value and service provided by some third party wifi providers. They are much more to us than a simple billing mechanism. I know that our system would not be what it is without them. I am sorry that this post got so lengthy, but I hope it sheds a little light on third party providers from a park owner.

Doug