In late June, Telstra officials told ZDNet Australia that wireless hotspot services were now available at the international terminal, following "gruelling" negotiations with airport officials.
Despite those claims, recent tests by ZDNet Australia show that the wireless Telstra network is not visible at Sydney's main international terminal on a standardly-configured Windows XP machine. As well, there is no mention of the Telstra service on the official Sydney Airport site; only rival Optus gets a guernsey.
A Telstra spokesperson said that a restriction with the Cisco 350 access points used by Sydney Airport administration meant that the network SSID was not automatically broadcast to potential users, but had to be entered manually. Even users who have previously accessed Telstra hotspots from other locations need to re-enter the details.
That problem would be rectified in the future, the spokesperson said, and details of Telstra's offering added to the airport's Web site.
It's not surprising. Tel$tra fouled up with it's woeful ADSL rollout for years so why should we expect any better with it's amateur efforts to deploy this new technology. They'll blame anyone and everyone for the problems, but never themselves. We fall further and further behind with new infrastructure because the dominant player thinks it can screw up or wait for customers to walk in the door and so delay it to suit it's own feeble marketing efforts. The fibre network rollout is another example of the mess it imposes on us all.
We were the lucky country. NOT ANY MORE!