Summer’s here but everyone seems to have gone away on holiday. Certainly we’re down 50% on staff, you can drive across London without sitting in traffic. I was even an hour early for a meeting just outside of the M25 last Tuesday.

So, we’ve established that there are no Londoners in London (are there ever) and this weekend there will be even less.

Who’s driven the usage of our Wireless Hotspots through the roof? Not only did we install more Wireless Hotspots last month than in the previous quarter combined, but our average daily online usage is up almost 100% this month over last year. That has to be a good sign doesn’t it? Our Hotels are jammed full and the cafes we look after don’t seem to be doing to badly either.

An article in the Metro this week suggested that online sales are up 16% despite everything else growing at a snail’s pace. Are all the tourists here this summer enjoying the favourable Euro or do we have a significant number of desperate graduates looking for jobs and making the most out of our Free and Paid WiFi Hotspots.

Ok, so we certainly have more Wifi hotspots this year, but we’re up on average daily use. We have more Free Wi-Fi Hotspots but these are still our minority locations. Pre-paid Wi-Fi usage is up too – looks like our prices are right after all!!

Enjoy the summer sun this weekend. If you’re in London, it’s unlikely that you’ll see us at the carnival, but certainly our offices will be mobbed (not inside thankfully).

If you’ve been to our offices recently, you will have seen our factory churning out Wi-Fi with a vengeance. The picture you see above is only an artist’s illustration, but the PolkaSpots coming out of the chimney are in fact real.

We have a very talented man called David to thank for his massive efforts in creating a sketch that identifies our business so well. Thanks David! If you want to reach David, you can email averytalentedman@polkaspots.com

In 2005, Simon Morley started PolkaSpots Limited. Now in it’s fourth year, PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi has changed a lot, grown in size, gained a number of good looking people and moved to the moon.

PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi  is now part of PolkaSpots Industries and has just acquired a little sister; PolkaSpots Web.

PolkaSpots Web provides a complete Online Business Solution. Never before has creating your Online Business been easier. Your website, lead generation, customer management, forums, blogs, ecommerce and newsletters. And, there’s analytics and reporting so you can watch your business grow…

We’ve completely integrated our Supafly Wi-Fi service with PolkaSpots Web. Now your Wi-Fi hotspot is a part of your Online Business too. You can now access your own reports, re-brand your login pages and even add newsletter sign-up form to your front page.

Read more…

18 months ago, we decided that we were going to stop laminating our Supafly Wi-Fi Internet Vouchers. We print tens of thousands of these every year and it seemed very environmentally unfriendly to be covering each innocent piece of paper in plastic.

And there we stopped, making the plastic vouchers almost completely green! If you want to test out how degradable they are, get a cup of water, drop one in and watch it fall apart in front of you.

Perhaps don’t do this too often as it’ll work out to be an extremely wasteful and expensive habit. Also, make sure you store your Internet Vouchers in a dry and cool cupboard.

In an effort to reduce our carbon footprint, we’ve now introduced the PolkaSpots Green Card. Currently only available online, these prepaid WiFi Vouchers come with either 60 or 180 minutes of wireless internet access and either one or two trees!!!

60 Minutes + One Tree = £3
180 Minutes + Two Trees = £8

These are only £1 and £2 more than our standard packages – there’s no better and cheaper way to offset some of your carbon emissions.

We’re also offering to plant ten trees for each new Wi-Fi Hotspot owner that signs up in November and December 2007.

Read more about Carbon Clear (www.carbonclear.com), the company with whom we’ve partnered to achieve this.

You can read the more about our initiative about green wi-fi hotspots here.

Specialist Wi-Fi Hotspot company PolkaSpots has enabled rural African Co-operative Internet Service Provider LinkNet to realise their dream of rolling out telecommunications, technical support and training throughout the villages of Macha and Mukinge, bringing the 21st century to villagers in Zambia in a sunstainable manner. It does so by providing telecommunications carrier grade access and accounting application services to LinkNet.

With the introduction of the Internet in rural Africa, the potential for changing people’s lives in that part of the world is enormous.

• Quality education can now be extended to more students.
• Pupils boarding at school are now able to keep in contact with their parents.
• Teachers can check that their salaries are in the bank before they make a round trip to the nearest town, 70 miles away.
• Chiefs can now contact local villages via email and spend the time they’ve saved assisting others.

The following stories illustrate just how far-reaching these changes already are:

Local farmer Fred Mweetwa used the Internet to teach himself how to grow sunflower seeds and produce sunflower oil. He now has a flourishing business employing 10 people.

8-year-old Merel van Stam sits in front of her computer and music keyboard and waits for her music teacher’s instructions. More than 8,000 miles away in Lakeville, Minnesota Kristin Shoemaker boots up her computer and webcam and plugs in her keyboard. She uses video services to upload daily lessons. Ms. Shoemaker teaches Merel how to play basic piano chords and scales with the same clarity as if she were sitting next to her. They can even play the piano at the same time!

LinkNet and PolkaSpots aim to continue rolling out this technology across the region in order to benefit as many as possible.

Closer to home, PolkaSpots is working to broaden access to the Net across the UK and Europe. Alongside their successful pre-paid service, they have just launched a new low cost, fully managed, free WiFi package designed for small businesses.

About PolkaSpots

Started in 2005, PolkaSpots Limited is a small, privately owned Wireless Internet Service Provider based in West London. They provide businesses in the UK with fully managed Wi-Fi Hotspot solutions allowing customers to get online wirelessly at a very low cost. They also provide third party companies around Europe and rural Africa with a fully-hosted, white label billing and authentication system that enables them to roll out their own Hotspot Network with low capital outlay.

Good to know that some shops in central London reported that the Internet was open over the Easter weekend.

We still have to confirm whether the Internet was available elsewhere. Certainly we’re pretty sure most of our Wireless Hotspots were up and running and people were able to get on with their strange browsing activities.

We’re not far off 4 years old and we’ll be starting Primary School in September. Things are getting pretty serious.

Because we’ve reached this grand old age, we thought it would be nice to share the brief history of PolkaSpots Limited.