Adelaide CBD a new hotspot - News - Communications

To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu

--------------------------------------------------------------
This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
--------------------------------------------------------------

Adelaide CBD a new hotspot

By Leila Henderson, 0
September 17, 2003
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Adelaide-CBD-a-new-hotspot/0,130061791,120278674,00.htm

The City of Adelaide has staked a claim to be the first in the world to offer international and national visitors the ability to connect to a public wireless network billable to their home ISP account.

The new citilan network went live today linking the CBD with North Adelaide along a boulevard about 5km long, and the west end arts district with east end restaurants.

Each of about 50 hotspots allows access within a range 200 metres line of sight.

The service comes at an appealing cost -- a few dollars added to the customer's bill each month if they already have accounts with ISPs Internode or AirNet, and access at a few cents a minute if not.

Citilan has been designed to allow the network to be used by multiple retail and wholesale Internet service providers concurrently.

"Rather than betting on a single-end service provider, citilan is a wholesale wireless local loop, available to any suitably qualified retail service provider," says Agile CEO Simon Hackett.

Citilan is the public release of a network that has been under development and trial for several months. The underlying hotspot network is operated by AAA Telecommunications, which is a joint venture between Agile Communications (owner of Internode) and AirNet, two Adelaide-based licensed carriers. It uses a combination of Agile, AirNet and Adelaide City Council infrastructure such as traffic lights and lamp posts to locate and interconnect Cisco/Aironet wireless LAN radios.

m.Net Corporation CEO Horden Wiltshire says becoming Australia's first city to launch a public access open space network wasn't easy. m.Net kicked off the venture almost a year ago with members of its mobile broadband consortium.

"Working with city traders, using city infrastructure and working through the technical issues with multiple partners has been interesting but all the partners involved have shown great determination to make this work," Wiltshire said.

Customers can use the network by logging on to a citilan hotspot and using their Web browser to authenticate back to their "home" ISP. Internode and AirNet ISP customers can use their usual dialup or ADSL username and password to access the network.

Services will also be offered via global roaming partners to visiting users from other ISPs both nationally and internationally.

Citilan supports a variety of mechanisms for itinerant, casual access, including purchasing airtime using a credit card. Other payment methods, such as payments by mobile phone, are also being trialed.

Hackett believes wireless LAN will become the ubiquitous choice for short range, high-bandwidth wireless communications.

"The wireless hotspot market will be at least as significant in the medium term as the development of the handheld mobile telephone," he said.

Agile and AirNet have several trials under way in regional Australia using 802.11b technology to deliver fixed wireless broadband links, as opposed to the roaming access used by citilan, to residential and business customers.