NSW Government free wifi plan killed off

NSW Government free wifi plan killed off

• In: Blog
• By: john
• May 1st, 2008

The NSW government’s ambitious free wifi plan for major CBD areas in the state has just been cancelled.

The overseas experience is that large-scale WiFi projects have proved ineffective in meeting the needs of local businesses and the community,” Mr Roozendaal [Minister for Infrastructure] said.

Most schemes sponsored by overseas governments have collapsed and require further funding to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. With technology changing so quickly, I cannot expose NSW taxpayers to that sort of risk.

In the US, free wireless schemes in Chicago, Houston and San Francisco have been dumped after failing commercially.

While all of this is accurate, it’s only part of the picture. A number of cities have successful public wifi systems, while San Francisco has the “Free the Net” project, supported by Meraki, the makers of affordable, plug and play mesh network devices, which covers a large area of the downtown of San Francisco, and has over 80.000 users, and yet which was begun less than a year ago.

So, while it’s disappointing to see the government abandon a project which would see the equivalent of running water in an information age freely available to large sections of the population of NSW, the positive side to this is that it gives the opportunity for a bottom up network like San Francisco’s to thrive.

If you are interested in doing something about that, see the Free Sydney Wireless, and Free Canberra Wireless projects, whose aim are to help foster such networks.

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