NZ Wireless free wifi on Wellington waterfront up and running ?

Forums › New Zealand Mobile and Wireless › NZ Wireless free wifi on Wellington waterfront up and running ?

uzumati

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#71739 16-Nov-2010 08:10

Great news, free wifi is supposedly up and running on the welly waterfront

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/4341057/Waterfront-wireless-access-free

Friends and I tried to access both the NZWireless and Free Public Wifi (I'm guessing trademe) yesterday via iphones.
We could see the services, receive ip addresses but didn't actually achieve a successful connection. We tried from numerous spots along the waterfront ranging from queens wharf to Te Papa.
It's great to have positive media for once, but have they jumped the gun in this instance...
Anyone know what the true eta of the service is or any particular settings we have to configure ?

{MOD EDIT : SP : Added "NZ Wireless" to the title to differentiate from the free Trade Me service discussed here http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=42&topicid=68051}

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meow
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#405178 16-Nov-2010 08:23

That's pretty cool - I would possibly say that the thing would be getting murdered by tourists etc at the moment as if a new KFC opened. Try again with a laptop or something - I would be interested to see what sort of speed you achieve with this.

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dewyodor

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#405218 16-Nov-2010 10:18

Hi,
Agree there is something wrong with the two supposedly free Wellington wireless network s, nothing works ..

I tried both my phone and laptop at Frank Kitts Park on Tuesday morning 16 Nov, and neither would connect.

I also looked on the NZwireless website and there is nothing mentioned there either, its as if it does not exist .. no instructions on how to connect, no info at all for that matter.

Bad PR for the media and NZWireless to announce something like this via the newspapers that is dead in the water ..

come on guys, get your act together and smarten up ..

Dewy

sbiddle

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#405227 16-Nov-2010 10:48

The system is certainly up and working right now - I know because our team installed it and am currently connected to it now. It has been live since Friday and there have been several hundred unique MAC addresses connect to it per day, with iPhone users making up a significant percentage of the users.

sbiddle

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#405294 16-Nov-2010 13:39

Just as an update there has just been a brief outage since I posted that while power was moved in one of the buildings. Things are up and running again now.

allan

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#405299 16-Nov-2010 13:43

Just tried NZWireless whike walking across Frank Kitts Park. Works for me.

dewyodor

12 posts

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#405314 16-Nov-2010 14:01

Since I've been told that its working, I tried again on both PC and phone at 1:45pm, opposite Frank Kitts Park.

I now get a "connection" with my phone, but the speed is so slow that anything I try and
access just times out. Tried to access my gmail messages and got two timeouts then gave up.

For this free wifi offering to be successful, it has to be a lot smarter, have bigger bandwidth and allow more connections than this. I have tried free wifi at several large airports etc and have always had an excellent response. This has to be consistently as good. I am giving up on this for now ...

Cheers
Dew Y

SteveON

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#405330 16-Nov-2010 14:25

dewyodor: Since I've been told that its working, I tried again on both PC and phone at 1:45pm, opposite Frank Kitts Park.

I now get a "connection" with my phone, but the speed is so slow that anything I try and
access just times out. Tried to access my gmail messages and got two timeouts then gave up.

For this free wifi offering to be successful, it has to be a lot smarter, have bigger bandwidth and allow more connections than this. I have tried free wifi at several large airports etc and have always had an excellent response. This has to be consistently as good. I am giving up on this for now ...

Cheers
Dew Y

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grimwulf

121 posts

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#405332 16-Nov-2010 14:29

During my quick walk down to Te Papa from the Ferry outside Foxglove I was able to connect fine to 'Free Public Wifi' (albeit the connection itself was v slow) up until I got close to the Stock Exchange building when it dropped.

I was then unable to connect to either 'Free Public Wifi' or 'TRADEME Free Wifi' - I even circled the Stock Exchange building just to test and no go.

I did notice that there are tons of Wifi points down there though - so perhaps it's just contention thats drowning it out?

dewyodor

12 posts

Geek

#405355 16-Nov-2010 15:05

The fact that something is free does not mean that is OK for NZWireless to provide a slow or poor service, otherwise what's the point of having it.

And why would anyone spend money on the paid NZwireless wifi version, if the free one is not delivering the goods ? Would the paid one be any better ?

Tried one last time to connect at around 2:50pm at Frank Kitts, and get a connection, but deathly slow speed, so no good for practical purposes.

Dew Yodor

uzumati

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Wannabe Geek

#405660 17-Nov-2010 07:11

In way too early this morning and connected in at Queens Wharf at 05:30. Snappy connection too....07:00 can't connect into server...

Maybe it's so successful that it has blown out the available bandwidth ? Don't get me wrong, it's great to have such a free service. However, I can see dewy's point - in the end it has to be a good customer experience...Being slow and timing out doesn't qualify in my books....Europe can get it right, surely we can as well...

dewyodor

12 posts

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#405767 17-Nov-2010 10:21

Tried again at 10:05 this morning (Wed 17 Nov), can connect but no response
probably due to no bandwidth ...

Who knows, the lack of any information about this leads one to think that
maybe its overloaded, underspec'd, and has been set up on a
minimal budget ?
I guess its anyones guess as to what the problem is ..

Dew

freitasm

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#405799 17-Nov-2010 10:55

Have you connected to it, and have you opened a browser to accept the terms and conditions before being allowed to have any data flow?

michaelmurfy

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#405821 17-Nov-2010 11:32

freitasm: Have you connected to it, and have you opened a browser to accept the terms and conditions before being allowed to have any data flow?

Yes, you just read my mind - Might pay to do that :)

Disrespective

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#405838 17-Nov-2010 12:01

Yeah i went down the other day and checked it out. You need to open a browser and accept the 60 minute time restriction and you're away. I tested speeds and got 1Mbit up and 1Mbit down. So acceptable for general use.

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#405869 17-Nov-2010 13:04

I'm on the waterfront side of Frank Kitts Park and my iPad won't connect but that may just be because the signal here is weak. I'm not too enthused about it anyway since 3G data is so cheap these days, but I can see the value for overseas visitors.

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