Telecom New Zealand launches national WiFi network

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freitasm

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#130758 26-Sep-2013 20:48

More here:

Telecom New Zealand announced its plans to rapidly expand and commercialise its extensive national WiFi network. Telecom has already transformed selected public phone boxes into WiFi hotspots, with 700 hotspots live by 7 October and more than 2,000 hotspots expected to be live by the middle of 2014.

Telecom Retail Chief Executive Chris Quin also announced that from 7 October Telecom will offer WiFi free to all Telecom mobile customers on pay-monthly plans and on the $19 and $29 prepaid packs, helping to make their mobile data go further and make broadband access more pervasive.

Other Telecom customers, customers of other mobile networks and visitors using a New Zealand or Australian mobile can continue to access the WiFi network for a flat fee of just $9.95 per month. A feature of Telecom WiFi is that one-time registration gives access to the entire network, making the service easy to use. Telecom is also working on a range of other pricing plans to enable more flexible access to the WiFi network.

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#903484 27-Sep-2013 08:35

About time they did this. Hopefully the other networks will follow suit and the dark days of hard-to-find / expensive WiFi will be over.

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#903491 27-Sep-2013 08:42

steve98: About time they did this. Hopefully the other networks will follow suit and the dark days of hard-to-find / expensive WiFi will be over.

there might not be much point. at only $10/month for (in theory) 30GB of data, customers of other networks will still be pretty well off just using the Telecom hotspots.

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#903496 27-Sep-2013 08:49

NonprayingMantis:
steve98: About time they did this. Hopefully the other networks will follow suit and the dark days of hard-to-find / expensive WiFi will be over.

there might not be much point. at only $10/month for (in theory) 30GB of data, customers of other networks will still be pretty well off just using the Telecom hotspots.

Pretty sure Voda wouldn't want their customers to be giving Telecom $10 per month and also be seen to be lagging in the feature department.

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#903499 27-Sep-2013 08:52

Maybe Vodafone will use the RED post-boxes to deploy their Pico LTE network :)

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#903507 27-Sep-2013 09:03

A pico LTE network would be a bad idea. It costs more than WiFi, less bandwith in general and less coverage.

I used the Telecom WiFi service in AKL during TechEd - was having a pizza at lunch time, noticed there was the free WiFi spot from one of the payphones nearby and downloaded a Windows Phone update during lunch, installing it immediately. Their trial was 1GB a day per user.

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#903520 27-Sep-2013 09:07

steve98:
NonprayingMantis:
steve98: About time they did this. Hopefully the other networks will follow suit and the dark days of hard-to-find / expensive WiFi will be over.

there might not be much point. at only $10/month for (in theory) 30GB of data, customers of other networks will still be pretty well off just using the Telecom hotspots.

Pretty sure Voda wouldn't want their customers to be giving Telecom $10 per month and also be seen to be lagging in the feature department.

well if the alternative is that they spend millions building a second wifi network and then give it away for free to their own customers, why not?

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#903521 27-Sep-2013 09:09

The hotspot in Mangers was giving me something like 12mb down and 9mb up the other day, not bad for a free service. Likewise the hotspot at Jellicoe pools Onehunga gave me about half those speeds which is still impressive specially given its free status

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#903522 27-Sep-2013 09:10

Will be interesting to see if those speeds remain, as I think the T & C's mention rate shaping to 1Mbps.

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#903525 27-Sep-2013 09:16

I can get coverage from one of the payphone hotspots from the front room of my house, maybe I should just use that instead of VDSL :P

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#903529 27-Sep-2013 09:20

Telecom hotspot in Panmure was quite fast when I tried it 30/5 speeds.

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#903540 27-Sep-2013 09:40

I know the folks doing the Wifi deployment. If they can get VDSL at the Phonebox they put it in, otherwise they will install EUBA ADSL, or worst case BUBA ADSL. It all depends on what Chorus can offer at that location.

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#903558 27-Sep-2013 09:51

plambrechtsen: I know the folks doing the Wifi deployment. If they can get VDSL at the Phonebox they put it in, otherwise they will install EUBA ADSL, or worst case BUBA ADSL. It all depends on what Chorus can offer at that location.

Or Vodafone RBI hehe :)
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#903605 27-Sep-2013 10:55

Shame it is not free for Telecom home broadband customers as well, but I suppose it is designed as a marketing tool for the mobile side of the business, with the added bonus of getting traffic off the mobile network.

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#903643 27-Sep-2013 12:20

GregV: Shame it is not free for Telecom home broadband customers as well, but I suppose it is designed as a marketing tool for the mobile side of the business, with the added bonus of getting traffic off the mobile network.

probably much harder to automatically authenticate a fixed line customer - as their mobile could be with anybody, whereas its very easy to tell which mobile provider someone is with when they connect to wifi.

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#903662 27-Sep-2013 12:31

NonprayingMantis:
GregV: Shame it is not free for Telecom home broadband customers as well, but I suppose it is designed as a marketing tool for the mobile side of the business, with the added bonus of getting traffic off the mobile network.

probably much harder to automatically authenticate a fixed line customer - as their mobile could be with anybody, whereas its very easy to tell which mobile provider someone is with when they connect to wifi.

Is the Telecom Wifi authenticating by querying the SIM of the phone? Or asking the user to enter their phone number and a password? Can someone with a Telecom mobile account connect their wifi-only tablet to the system? Or is it only the specific Telecom-powered devices that can connect?

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