fyneguy:

@VIPCO

You know I always laugh when I read such posts as yours.

You claimed to be inundated with excessive demands for money.

Ha! Eyin omo adamo e de beru olorun! Why do u people lie?

How come nobody inundated me with such demands? The church ofcourse has a number of programmes with partnership opportunities (opportunities underscored!) You think you were doing the church a hard favour by giving money for these programmes? What a soul! o ma se o.

Hmmm may be they also made ''these excessive demands for money'' at gunpoint?

It's obvious we unsettle the kingdom of darkness. Eyah.

my brother fyneguy leave matta. settle ko unsettle ni

phraoh:

@JJYOU[JEW]
am sure u dnt patronize intercontinental bank,bt if u must knw,all the POSTER said is true.Rite nw i and all ma siblings in school ve all quit d bank an dats as of yesterdae.A bank dat collects 50 bucks even 4 usin deir ATM is fuckd up.

t_hanz:

Hi VIPICO,

Inorder to deploy a wireless hotspot, you'll need a wireless router and a hotspot timer. Also someone technically savvy should deploy this for you if you don't know what to do. It'll be worth the amount especially if you don't know what to do.

However you can use the Mikrotik Router OS which has a built-in Hotspot timer. Mikrotik is rugged, stable and easy to deploy. It works on a Linux platform. You can read more about Mikrotik at www.mikrotik.com I've been using and deploying Mikrotik for people and haven't had complaints that aren't easily solved.

In terms of WiFi hotspot and WiMax; A WiFi hotspot has a lower coverage area (i.e. your office building and a few offices/houses near you) than a WiMax which has a larger range and would extend to cover long distances (deployed strategically, WiMax can cover a particular city). It is just a matter of funds to buy the WiMax equipment, deploy and have a timer to use for your clients.

I hope this helps.

t_hanz:

The ideal thing for any cafe this era is to include wireless hotspots, and if possible WiMax. You'll not be limited to give service in your area only but other areas.[color=#990000]

Most importantly, make sure you have the right ISP that'll provide uninterrupted service for a full 30day period. This will help boost your credibility before your customers. They don't know your ISP, they know you. So if anything goes wrong, you'll take the heat.

One other thing,  being technically sound is very ideal or you get a trusted person who is. This is because most problems are internal but we cafe owners have gotten used to blaming ISPs once there's a small glitch without checking our own end thoroughly. This is where bandwidth managers/monitors come in handy.

Please note: I, personally, don't trust any Nigerian ISP for now because I've dealt with some and was SERIOUSLY disappointed. The speed could be very ok but the downtimes are just too much.

I remember one bitter experience (4years ago) where our cafe went down in the early hours of the morning (b/w 8am & 10am). I called my 9ja ISP then to inquire about the problem and to my utter shock someone told me they were trying to rearrange the office and had to shut the equipment down. Can you imagine,  I had customers waiting in line while my ISP was busy managing its customers from and office where they can be switched off and on at will like NEPA (PHCN).

Most foreign ISPs are great. They give you what you want, when you want but they want their payments on time too.

tundecraig:

The cold hard truth is that no matter what you do or don't do the income of a cyber cafe is limited to the number of hours in a day and you can never have more than 24 hours  a day.
Thus if you have 20 computers in your cafe and you charge N100 per hour, all you can make is N48,000 in a day and the reality of course is that you will most likely NEVER make that as there will always be times when a computer or the other is free even if you open 24 hours  a day, 7 days a week.
Most Cafe's close shop after their first year  in operation. Very few stay open for up to 5 years and I  do not know ANY cyber cafe that was operating in 2003 that is still operating (I may be wrong).
There is lots of cashflow in cyber cafe business, but very little profit.
The are only two ways out:

1) Customise your browsing services
2) Add other services such that browsing pulls in less than 5% of your income. Services like Training, E-Commerce services, Web Hosting & Development, Computer Sales, Ebay services, Information products distribution, Online & Merchant Payment services.