How can you earn Wi-Fi in public places (if you do not pay, then you are a commodity)

The map of the location of Wi-Fi devices in real time shows the points of greatest interest of visitors to the exhibition

With the development of iBeacons, a good 5 GHz broadband channel, the emergence of fairly affordable beamforming antennas, today it is possible to provide a fast connection to an HD video stream even in such traditionally difficult places as stadiums. By the way, we already had a project where we made an application for the stadium with the ability to view replays right after the goal on the phone and help with tactical placement, player statistics and so on.

Now Wi-Fi has got new features for the following places:

• Museums (technology replaces guides).
• Sports facilities from 5–8 thousand spectators.
• Exhibitions (heat maps as in the picture above, navigation).
• Shopping centers (navigation and advertising).
• Transport hubs (service at airports like auto-check-in for a flight).
• Warehouses (search for goods).
• Tourist facilities (open Wi-Fi and analytics).

Below - more about how, why and why. And where you are the buyer, where you are the goods.
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Museums

Small iBeacon can be mounted in the same place where information signs are attached. Users pick up a museum application (or get a device with it) and open a Wi-Fi channel to download content. By Bluetooth, beacons transmit their markings in certain sectors (for example, 10 meters from the painting “Mona Lisa” or 2 meters in front of the stand of “Katana esaula Shishikov”). The application, in response to this, understands where the user is located, shows him the content in his language or loses the necessary block from the audio guide.

It is monetized in two ways: with additional content (such as “39 rubles for a full tour” and “Order a copy of this picture, it will be ready by the end of the tour”), and also that the museum receives people actually subscribed to its PUSH notifications. That is, a new audience that can be notified about an event, a new exhibition, or something similar. An additional plus - the content can be seen outside the museum, for example, somewhere else in the city when visiting sights.

A mobile application in museums now replaces guides and personnel who serve intercoms and translators.

Now in the world, second generation iPods with a screen are often used as terminals.

Sometimes, instead of lighthouses, QR codes are used, but from the aesthetic point of view this is not the best option, besides requiring a heap of unnecessary actions.

With regard to installation, it is important to know this:

• Lighthouses are very easy to mask, plus plastic, glass and wood almost do not shield their signal. No cable.
• Low-energy Bluetooth is used (one battery, according to manufacturers, lasts for 5 years). In my practice, of course, not so - one and a half years.
• There are solutions for use outdoors and in aggressive environments.

In my museums, in my experience, they do not believe in it: they say, we have guides, everything works fine, many of the guides are our friends, they are good. It is very difficult to explain to a person who remembers another five years in three years what Bluetooth is.

Sport facilities

Various hockey arenas, ice arenas, volleyball and basketball sports complexes, football stadiums, everything from 5-8 thousand spectators ... - you can put high-density Wi-Fi and do interactive navigation.

Here the content is all free, and the product is just you. You are shown advertisements, for example, the logo of the sponsor in the corner of the video with a replay of the goal. In world practice, such applications are perceived with a bang by the sponsors and allow you to receive additional sponsorship packages.

Now most of the arenas are being completed for the World Cup. It's a shame that they don’t really think about the heritage regime, and in fact there will be teams that are represented in the regions with objects. Many viewers come to the same “Krylya Sovetov”: they have fans, people who walk with their families. Operational maintenance costs will be very large, and a large budget line will be required. Now you can start to cover the operating system, using their infrastructure, which they already do. Content, mobile application and easy Wi-Fi upgrading - and you have sponsor banners in the application, non-aggressive additional information, products from fan shops, branded best moments of the match. Net income.

In the West, this is also used to fasten navigation - as from the third sector 21F, to go to your favorite KFC in the food court, for example.

The NBA and the NHL have the most such modules, for example, the Pittsburgh Penguins NHL at the CONSOL Energy Center stadium:


This is a stadium layout. It has 781 HD monitors and a high-density network deployed based on Cisco solutions. Different zones broadcast different content for phones. The number of advertisers has doubled, the number of sponsors has increased threefold. Approximately 80% of viewers saved the content that they watched by relaying it to social networks.

And the Real Madrid football club was made even more interesting. In addition, the application has a photo module with the player. You photograph a selfie under the frame, a player is inserted there, sort of like he is hugging you on the field - and you get a great photo. It is worth it from the application a little less than a couple of euros. I do not know who does it and why, but it is in demand.



Experts note an increased level of security (including digital content in the guide signs at the right time will help to optimize the evacuation time, manage the movement of people after the end of the event), but I still don’t know the cases. Is that the fans of the warring teams "bred" so.

For one football club, we made a chat between the fans in the mobile application, showing teams, statistics, sharing photos of key moments, stadium schemes, alerts and various other features.

Exhibitions

At the NAIS civil aviation infrastructure exhibition, we showed a heat map by scanning Wi-Fi broadcast packets. This is done on Cisco technologies, and so far only we in Russia have practical experience in setting up and operating with them. The solution is not cheap, but it works without complaints.

You can make a schedule of workload inside the room, analytics of the flows, analytics of the interestingness of the reports of individual speakers, in short, Yandex.Probki indoors. And, of course, the navigation associated with the schedule.

Shopping centers

The main problem of trading floors during the crisis now is low occupancy. There are no people. Wi-Fi does not help to attract new people, but it helps to more accurately find what is needed in the mall due to not very aggressive push-ups and advertising, functionality of info stands.

Using Wi-Fi, you can identify the most crowded places in the mall, take into account the length of the session shopping and so on - in general, like Google Analytics, only in the real world. Authentication via social networks allows marketers to get information about people in the shopping area (assuming, of course, that the user’s page in social networks is filled in correctly). Based on the information received, the mobile application targets (age, gender, etc.) products and services for visitors.

Transport

World practice is still the same navigation and advertising at stations, in river ports, airports, and bus stations. We still have a problem with railway stations and bus stations - the percentage of the marginal public is high, the implementation does not pay off. At the airports in one form or another there is a rudiment.

The usual practice is navigation at the airport (in Russia they will probably be confused, perhaps, only in Moscow), automatic check-in for the flight, baggage reset (as in Amsterdam, you put the baggage, the machine issues a sticker, glues, goes to the specified tape, puts it).

There is a business case of one regional airport, where Cisco's Wi-Fi infrastructure was deployed and the indoor navigation and tracking system of the DECK company was implemented.

These were the key tasks at the airport:

• Providing easy navigation in large lounges, between terminals for passengers.
• Providing passengers with information and additional services in the mobile “Online Scoreboard” and services.
• Optimization of personnel work in the maintenance of the aircraft and the passage of TGO.

In the project, the expanded Wi-Fi infrastructure allowed launching a mobile application for passengers, where there is a user-friendly interface and navigation with the viewing module, as well as a special mobile application for the personnel serving the aircraft at TGO. Now you can sell sponsorship packages and advertising through a mobile application.

One of the items to reduce the cost of maintaining the airport is the correct presentation of information about where and what you can get, the sale of services through the app, advertising shops and local restaurants, any assistance in booking hotels.

Naturally, in the same applications shows online scoreboard flights.

Some airports do not provide customers with navigation, but they use applications to optimize the personnel’s work in servicing the aircraft and passing TSS, asking them to move with beacons.

Warehouses

In warehouses, for example, with the help of beacons, the work of porters is often accelerated, but again not in Russia. It is much easier for us to explain to the warehouse owners what route control is (this is when a log of movements of each person and piece of equipment is written).

We did a test implementation for one warehouse, they had the task of fast unloading in the shortest possible time. After this unloading it was necessary to find the goods, and here the lighthouses helped.

Tourist facilities

It's simple. Wi-Fi is free, but to log in, please share the link on Facebook. A more humane option is to just give Wi-Fi and show that from this place you get a great instagram post. People share pictures and promote a place. A more difficult option - all the same museum guide.

Registration in such places is by phone or social network profile (where there is a telephone) in accordance with the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of July 31, 2014 No. 758 “On Amendments to Certain Acts of the Government of the Russian Federation in Connection with the Adoption of the Federal Law“ On Amendments to Federal Law "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection" and certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation on the streamlining of information exchange using information and telecommunication networks ". This means that you can, if you wish, track the paths of individual users and use them in analytics.



The architecture is as follows: there is a PON (navigation point, anchor), a POI object (any significant point on the map that shows something extra), an event (condition for triggering, most often PON and radius) and action (scenario for ).

Devices and vendors

• As part of the integration, we use Cisco solutions (Wi-Fi infrastructure), DECK is an indoor navigation and tracking system. If interested in more detail - write in a personal.
• As for the beacons, here the “field for maneuvers” is quite wide. We cooperate with a wide range of manufacturers: from Poland to China. The principle of operation of beacons is the same, so I can not single out any manufacturer separately.
• My mail is AChuvilin@croc.ru