No free wifi in Sydney

I am sitting in a cafe in the middle of Singapore, catching up on emails and writing. SingTel provides free wifi city-wide. And people do use it. About 25% of the patrons of this cafe are currently on their laptops. And they seemto hang around and buy drinks, as I am doing.

But Sydney can’t get its act together. Too hard, too expensive, says the state government.

Obviously we are not serious about the provision of what is really a basic telecommunications service. What a pathetic lack of vision.

3 comments on “No free wifi in Sydney”

1. Stilgherrian said:
   

   The problem is that the guv’mint is approaching this as a centrally-planned Soviet-style project. While that might be OK in Singapore it’s just wrong elsewhere.

   The guv’mint is talking to Big Telcos, who in turn want to make Big Money. But this is a small scale project, repeated over and over. It’s also not about making money, it’s about providing a service infrastructure.

   Setting up wireless hotspots is about finding a myriad of locations for the access points with their range of 20m or so and connecting them to the Internet. The hardware costs $200 or less, and the Internet links cost $20 a month. Set-up time is an hour per location, tops.

   This can and should be tackled at the community level. An “Irish” pub in Newtown, Sydney, called Kelly’s On King provides free WiFi to its customers, and pays for it. Money well spent, they reckon, because it pulls in the punters.

   Organisations like wireless.org.au/ are already at work using tools like Meraki to create “mesh networks”. Every second business in the street buys a sub-$200 Meraki box, only 1 in 10 needs an Internet connection — and suddenly you have free wireless Internet pervading your neighbourhood.

   
   2 May 2008 at 11:10 am
2. Zern said:
   

   “It’s also not about making money…”

   There be the catch. Therefore nothing will happen (as long as the conventional business approach is taken).

   
   2 May 2008 at 10:51 pm
3. Stilgherrian said:
   

   Indeed. But at the local level there IS a money angle: businesses that contribute to a local free WiFi network will encourage people to linger longer and therefore spend more.

   Of course that’s thinking ahead… something all too rare in businesses, large and small.

   
   3 May 2008 at 12:02 pm

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