Today Victorian Minister for Small Business, Innovation and Trade Philip Dalidakis announced that Melbourne would be launching a free wi-fi network across the CBD.
Apparently it’s “unparalleled” and “world class”.
It’s part of the Labor Government’s $11 million Victorian Free Wi-Fi Pilot and there are access points within at all CBD train stations, Bourke St Mall, Queen Victoria Market, and South Wharf Promenade at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
“This is just another reason why Victoria is the country’s home of innovation and technology,” said Philip Dalidakis, “we really do have the best of everything, not only in Melbourne but our regional cities as well.”
First the coffee, now this.
Sydney aborted a similar trial back in 2008 due to high costs, but it’ll be interesting to see just how functional the service is. The timing of the launch is deliberate. The AFL Grand Final long weekend kicks off tomorrow and brings with it an influx of people from all over Australia. Hopefully the service will hold up under the stress, but in my experience free Wi-Fi in cities is temperamental at best.
Hopefully this service will buck the trend.
Comments
19 responses to “Melbourne Is Getting Free Wi-Fi”
Didn’t it have free Wi-Fi already?
Yes iiNet(or internode) did it a while back, not sure if that is still up and running and Telstra have their wifi network setup, but you have to be Telstra customer.
I’d rather free tickets to the AFL Grand Final, Minister.
Unparalleled? World Class? Isn’t this how the NBN was described before they ditched FTTP?
Internode set up free wifi in Adelaide a year or two back, but I always found it much slower than my cellular data so never really bothered with it.
I dunno about ‘world class’ but at least a step in the right direction.
Wollongong has free wifi. Its nothing fancy but it works. You get about 4mpbs which not bad just for emails, general surfing and pokemon go.
Brisbane has had free wifi on the trains and in public parks for years now, not sure about the CBD though
Brisbane CBD has it, but it’s patchy at best, although the state library wifi is where it’s at if you need it around Queen St.
I wouldn’t bother mentioning the free train wifi. A 20mb data allowance dries up very quickly!
Our free wifi in the Perth CBD isn’t bad. Maybe I’m the only person using it?
I use it in Perth CBD also. Mostly just outside the Apple Store on Hay Street where I loudly exclaim “Wow this Perth CDB WIFI is so much faster than Apple’s pile’o’crap”. The doe-eye’d Apple disciples typically ignore me…
I love you!!
Fantastic news. Hopefully won’t have to keep typing in password or clicking on stuff if it auto connects it will be great. Glad the government are investing in stuff like this.
To have world-class Wi-Fi, don’t we need to have world-class Internet first?
Porn streaming will probably account for 90% of the data use…lol.
If Brazzers and Netflix join forces Adelaide wont be the only blackout