Image: Matthew Klein
Melbourne has joined the ranks of New York, London, Perth, Adelaide and Leichhardt in rolling out a free public Wi-Fi network that’s accessible to anyone within the municipality.
It’s a major development for the Melbourne metropolitan area, which has taken pride in its role as “Australia’s tech leader” as it will deliver the first of many Wi-Fi access points as part of the Daniel Andrews government’s $11 million Victorian Free Wi-Fi Pilot.
The Melbourne Wi-Fi rollout isn’t quite complete across the entire metropolitan area, but from today anyone can use the service dubbed as ‘VicFreeWiFi’ within all Melbourne CBD train stations, the Bourke St Mall, Queen Victoria Market, and South Wharf Promenade at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
According to the state government, more access points will be switched on over the coming months, with the full network to be up and running by the end of the year.
The Melbourne Wi-Fi pilot isn’t the only one that’s been operating, a project has been running successfully in Bendigo and Ballarat since December 2015 and has recorded one million sessions in the two regional cities during the nine months it was initiated.
Once the Melbourne network is complete, the VicFreeWiFi service will be the largest free public Wi-Fi network of its kind in Australia, covering an area of 600,000 square metres across the three cities.
Running for five years, the project is managed by telecommunications company TPG, and allows for up to 250 MB per device, per day.
Much to users’ relief, the service does not require personal logins or feature pop-up advertising, unlike what they might experience in hotels or the local McDonald’s.
The advanced infrastructure will also be available for piloting future connected city projects and for state and federal disaster response in the event of an emergency over the five-year pilot.
Victorian Minister for Small Business, Innovation and Trade Philip Dalidakis said this is just another reason why Victoria is the country’s home of innovation and technology.
“We really do have the best of everything, not only in Melbourne but our regional cities as well,” Mr Dalidakis said.
“Whether visitors are coming into town to go shopping, eat in Melbourne’s famous laneways or head to the AFL Grand Final this long weekend, they’ll all be able to access and enjoy the fastest free Wi-Fi in the country.”
