What defines a modern, secure, social WiFi network?
Purple WiFi thinks it's all about cloud
TRP: How does your new Presence Analytics feature work exactly?
GW: The customer has the right to opt-in or opt-out of using the WiFi in the venue. If a customer is not logged in and opted in, Purple WiFi's software can still detect an anonymous MAC address, confirm whether that MAC address is a new or repeat visitor, and see how long that device stays.
If a customer is opted in, the device MAC address can be linked to personal data, such as their age, gender, name, email address, location, language, likes, etc. meaning relevant vouchers can be pushed to the visitor.
Using Purple WiFi's Location Based Services (only available with Cisco and Cisco Meraki for now) the x,y co-ordinates of the device can be tracked within the specific venue.
The accuracy of the location-based tracking does depend on the number of access points in the space, there needs to be at least 3 for the triangulation to function.
This opens up new opportunities for brands, as they can start to geo-fence areas and gain a much greater understanding of customer behaviour, and introduce new campaigns to generate ROI and loyalty.
TRP: What are your predictions for the future of WiFi and Hotspot 2.0?
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This is an area that will be very interesting in the next few years. 4g and even 5G will not solve the network congestion that we are now experiencing and meet the growing needs of people's data consumption on their devices.
We have written a blog on Hotspot 2.0 here worth reading.
TRP: What are you future plans for the business?
We plan on continuing the excellent growth rate achieved so far, and would like to have the product available in most countries in the world. We are working closely with our partner network to achieve this.
We will continue to innovate with our product, in line with demands from our growing customer base. We plan on keeping fully up to speed with all technology advancements and keep a few steps ahead of the competition.
We are working with three universities already on projects that will help us a) advance the technology currently available and b) to visualise and understand further the power of the anonymised behavioural data that we are collecting.
Finally we are considering making Purple WiFi an open source platform so that other people can take what we have built and improve upon it.
Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.