Education

43 Air School — student hotspot management at scale

A managed student WiFi solution supporting 250+ students across a hostel environment and two buses travelling daily between Port Alfred and Port Elizabeth.

Challenge 1 — seamless hotspot management

43 Air School needed managed WiFi that could support 250+ students in a hostel environment and serve two buses travelling daily between campuses — all without replacing the existing network infrastructure.

Solution 1 — drop-in integration

Hotwireless fit in like a glove. The University purchased our cloud-managed switch with the hotspot service configured on a VLAN, using the existing 200 Mbps fibre uplink. Management became unified across students, lecturers, and administrative devices — all from one dashboard.

Challenge 2 — monetising without charging the basics

The University also needed an extra revenue stream — a way to monetise the hotspot for students who'd used up their complimentary daily allowance and wanted more.

Solution 2 — captive portal with two tiers

We set up a captive portal with tiered access:

• Free access: 250 MB per day per student — enough for essential coursework, messaging, and casual browsing.
• Voucher access: Purchased at the pilot shop in sizes from 40 GB to 400 GB. Works seamlessly on hostel WiFi and on the buses.

When a student connects to the 43 Air School Free WiFi SSID, the captive portal opens automatically on their laptop or phone. They can start browsing on their free daily allowance or sign in with a purchased voucher for uncapped usage. Throughput is throttled at 10 Mbps up and down per user to prevent any one student saturating the fibre or LTE uplinks.

The result

A unified network across campuses and vehicles, a fair-use free tier that covers essential student needs, and a voucher revenue stream that offsets the University's connectivity costs. One platform, two buses, two hundred and fifty students — and counting.