Customer Case Study - FreeFi Networks

Movies on the Go

Dotster's custom built application for FreeFi Networks makes movies and games available on-demand for airline travelers.

FreeFi Networks is a successful start-up whose product enables large public venues to offer free, wireless Internet access while generating ad revenue from the service. FreeFi's unique ad environment lets marketers direct their messages to a growing number of Wi-Fi users at free or paid Wi-Fi locations.

Recently, FreeFi had the brilliant idea to further monetize on its Wi-Fi service by making movies and games available on-demand to airline travelers. To develop this complicated application, they turned to their trusted business partner, Dotster.

The Idea

Airports are challenged, having been hit with both fewer fliers and lower gate rental revenue. Airports like the Denver National Airport have partnered with FreeFi to generate additional revenue without having to invest a dime. Given the captive audience that is simply waiting to board a flight, FreeFi started thinking about what else it could do with its Wi-Fi network in airports.

"We had this great idea-provide on-demand, downloadable content, quickly and affordably to airline passengers over our existing Wi-Fi network. People are on airplanes for several hours and have limited options for entertainment," said Larry Laffer, executive director, FreeFi. "We needed expertise to quickly put our idea into action, and that's when we turned to Dotster for web application development help."

The Challenge

m2go is a unique service that FreeFi offers in select airports that utilize its Wi-Fi services. The concept is easy: quickly and cheaply deliver movies and games on-demand to travelers. The execution was hard: travelers only have a limited amount of time prior to boarding, and other online services can take hours to download movies, or rely on continuous streaming during playback-time and bandwidth that airline passengers simply don't have.

The Solution

Dotster and m2go's solution was to store movies and games in an on-site server, taking advantage of FreeFi's high-speed Wi-Fi network to download the files in 30 minutes or less. Another challenging aspect of the application development work was that all the media files needed to be encoded with digital rights management, preventing the content from being shared on the Internet, and ensuring it expired within 48 hours of the rental or 24 hours after the user started viewing the movie.

Rather than develop the application internally, and defocus its IT staff, FreeFi opted to work with Dotster and leverage its resources and expertise in web development.

"When we were deciding how to build m2go, we knew we needed a team of specialists, but we also wanted to ensure that development was a collaborative partnership," said Laffer. "I wanted a partner that would take a more personal approach versus one of the big consulting firms where you can get lost in the shuffle or "outsourced" to another firm. Dotster's expertise in development and project management, and its approach to customer service fit the bill perfectly."

The development process was extremely efficient and collaborative, resulting in a working prototype that was ready for further refinement within 6 weeks of project kicking-off. "Having a development partner that was able to come back to us with ideas was great," said Laffer. "A lot of developers take their marching orders, complete the project and then give us a bill. Dotster used their expertise to overcome challenges; when there was a problem or when we asked for something that couldn't be done, they would come back to us with solutions and other ways of going about it."

"As part of the development process, we worked with Larry and his team to set clear goals for the project around an aggressive timeline," said Cas Falkowski, Web Development Manager at Dotster. "Communication is the key to success on complex projects. Everyone understood the work effort behind each phase and there were limited surprises during each application development cycle. The end result: FreeFi is happy with the performance of m2go, and we've created brand new functionality that makes flying more enjoyable-who wouldn't want that!"

Movies in the Sky

With m2go developed and operational, FreeFi needed to enlist movie studios to supply the downloadable content. "During our first meeting with Disney executives we sent a full length film to their laptops within minutes, and not long after the meeting we had our first movie studio partner," said Laffer. "They were impressed with the speed and ease of use of our service, which of course Dotster played no small part in ensuring."

Currently, m2go is available at the Oakland International Airport and has experienced strong initial success. FreeFi is working with other airports across the nation, as well as other movie studios, to expand its m2go service.

About Dotster

Dotster is a leading full-service provider of essential resources for businesses to get online and grow online. It has helped more than one million businesses and individuals establish their web presence, build their websites, and drive revenue. Dotster offers its customers a complete set of services including the ability to get online with a domain name and email address; build a major web presence with web hosting and custom website design; generate traffic with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), website promotion and social media platforms; and reduce IT costs with VPS hosting.

Dotster specializes in the development and design of small business websites. It has several offerings: low cost, template-based sites; custom sites based on open-source CMS platforms (such as Wordpress); e-commerce sites and custom application development. The Dotster web design and development team has helped hundreds of small business customers create professional websites and online applications.