Adelaide free wifi a mobile phone play
The contract to run Adelaide’s city-wide free wifi network may allow local internet company Internode’s mobile phone service to undercut competing mobile phone networks.
Internode yesterday won the tender to deliver free wireless coverage across Adelaide.
The company will receive $1.5 million from the State Government and the Adelaide City Council to install about 200 wifi base stations across Adelaide. After that, funding will cease and Internode will be required to find a way to make the network profitable.
Click here for full details of the Adelaide free wifi network including coverage maps.
Internode founder Simon Hackett yesterday told InDaily that profitability might be realised in his mobile phone business.
Building an entire mobile network from scratch didn’t make sense for the company, he said. But using wifi to augment the company’s existing 4G mobile phone service, on the other hand, might create a product that could out-compete traditional phone networks.
You might like
“It’s … effectively the modern form of the mobile phone network, in the sense that what matters about a mobile phone network these days – the voice always works, data’s where the action is. This is a way for us as an organisation to be involved in the evolution of mobile data, wherever that leads.
“There are already three wide-scale mobile networks in Australia. It probably makes little sense to build a fourth one, but it makes a lot of sense to build wifi into the way a broadband provider works, as something that’s another layer in addition to the mobile phone network.
“If we integrate this into our plans – one of the places that we’re heading is the notion that your own plan quota could wind up working on this thing instead.
“It can be part of your home broadband plan as you wander around the city, at a much lower effective cost for a gigabyte of data than the mobile phone companies charge.
“So you get this very much improved economics where the wifi is, and when you walk out of that, you go back to the 4G network.”
Internode already offers a 4G mobile phone service on the Optus network. The free wifi, based on the new 802.11n standard, would offer comparable download speeds.
Stay informed, daily
Because Internode is essentially reselling an Optus connection, the company is limited in the pricing it can offer customers.
The wifi play may free up Internode to offer cheaper plans based on lower mobile download quotas augmented by uncapped access to the city wifi network – potentially very attractive for city residents and workers.
Non-Internode customers using the free wifi will face a usage cap, Hackett said yesterday.
The commercial opportunity also lay in goodwill marketing and selling plans to city businesses and residents, Hackett said.
“The commercial model’s got multiple facets. It’s marketing – people know who to like.
“We think encouraging take up of the free wifi, we’re going to wind up producing some business opportunities for things like commercial connections to it. We’re looking at setting up products for people wanting to use it as an internet access mechanism.”
Launching the rollout with Hackett yesterday, Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood suggested the network might allow the city council to create a city-wide internet of things, of the type futurists have long predicted.
“This technology in the near future should be able to sense if there’s a mobile phone in the precinct,” Yarwood said. “If it’s not, it could actually lower the lights and save electricity.
“We could connect it to our sprinkler system and start to save water. We could connect it to sensors installed in every parking spot to actually manage our car parking, and identify through an app where car spaces are available in the city.
“And actually provide more real time feedback on pedestrian movements through the city, so we start to understand where some of the issues are in terms of supporting business, where we need to do place-making, where we need to widen footpaths.”
