The National Park Service is such a unique client because of how diverse their locations are. It is very easy to set up registers with excellent network communications in a store in the middle of a city. However, very few of the machines we support are like that. Most of the registers are considered to be in remote locations. Some of them are so far in the wilderness that you literally have to fly to reach them. It is hard enough for those people who have to get electricity to these places, but how can we establish a network with enough power to process credit cards and provide communications back to the main office software?

The answer is Cradlepoints! Over the years we have tried many different solutions to make communications better in remote locations, but our favorite is Cradlepoints. These little devices run off of cell signal to provide a very sustainable network. We have implemented dozens of these units and we are very happy with the results.

You may be asking, "But what if some of our locations don't have cell signal?" Don't worry, we have found a way to make them work even in signal desolate locations. These units are completely compatible with a variety of Satellite Antennas that improve the signal and provide your register with what it needs. We have installed many of these as well and they are doing a great job.

As far as credit cards, many parks choose to use an easily accessible Dial Up connection to run transactions. This option is fine, but very slow. Even if you are comfortable with these speeds, how much would the life of your remit people improve if they didn't have to copy all of the transactions off of a z-tape or use USB sticks? If your main office computer can communicate with your registers, they can remotely gather all of the data they need and not have to worry about dealing with z-tapes or losing a USB stick. 

We have a lot of reasons why we recommend these Cradlepoint devices so highly. We have seen them work and know the wonders they can do for Fee Programs in the National Parks. If you want to know more about how these units could save your park a lot of time and hassle, give us a call at 801-399-9200 and we can answer any of your questions.

In our day, it is becoming more and more uncommon for people to pay with cash. It is so easy and convenient to use a credit card that carrying cash is becoming old fashioned. Because of this, every park that collects a significant amount of fees has been set up with Credit Card Modems to accept card payments. However, to process credit cards, the park needs to be connected to some sort of network to communicate with the merchant. There is no way around this so we do whatever we can to make these communications possible.