NetGear Integrates The Cloud

BRACKNELL, U.K. -- NETGEAR, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTGR), a worldwide provider of technologically advanced, branded networking products, and The Cloud, one of Europe’s leading WiFi networks, today announced availability of a fully integrated product offering to enable small businesses to deliver a high-quality, revenue-generating WiFi solution. NETGEAR will provide The Cloud with its award-winning wireless hardware to enable SMEs the opportunity to increase revenue by offering public access WiFi to customers.

The Hotspot-in-a-Box solution enables SMEs to offer their customers an easy to use, reliable wireless broadband access service, using Netgear’s FWAG114 dual band VPN firewall router and the managed network from The Cloud. Netgear has long enjoyed a reputation for offering reliable and cost-effective networking solutions for the SME markets, and was therefore a natural choice to provide the hardware for the Hotspot-in-a-Box. Once the solution has been installed, customers are able to link their WiFi enabled PDA’s and laptops to the hotspot automatically. From here they can then connect to their own ISP or log onto The Cloud’s pay-as-you-go service. The service is fully managed and supported 24/7 by The Cloud, which means that no intervention is needed to keep the hotspot running.

The solution offers compelling return on investment figures as businesses can expect to recoup their outlay in 7 months – this is based on only 24 hours of use per month on the pay-as-you-go service. This equates to just one customer spending one hour online each day. The solution is suitable for anywhere that people gather, particularly restaurants, cafes, bars, hotels, shopping centres and areas such as airport lounges and railway stations.

Manda Rigby, NETGEAR’s UK & Ireland managing director comments: “The UK has the highest number of WiFi users in Europe, and the revenue from hotspots is set to top £2bn across Europe in the next few years. The Hot-spot-in-a-Box from The Cloud enables SME businesses to capitalise on this opportunity. In addition to this revenue, WiFi is proving to be a real differentiator, enabling businesses to offer customers on-the-spot information from the Internet; including delivery information, pricing quotations, stock levels or product availability.

Netgear Inc.

The Cloud