Yesterday, Telstra officially launched their Telstra Wi-Fi trial, giving 30 minutes free Wi-Fi access on about 150 hotspots around the country. Back in May, I wrote about Telstra’s upcoming Wi-Fi network, so you may want to check on that article to find out more about it.
Basically, Telstra is planning to launch their Telstra Wi-Fi program in 2015 so they are trialling the service by making it available for anyone around the vicinity, even if you are not a Telstra customer, and give it a go.
You should see a “Free_Telstra_WiFi” SSID (name of the Wi-Fi network) if you are in the vicinity of these hotspots. If you are in Melbourne CBD, you can try it out in Bourke Street Mall – which I plan to test tomorrow at lunch time. If you are not in Melbourne, try Hyde Park in Sydney, or King George Square in Brisbane. Speed may vary and there are also limits to the number of people that can connect to the network. There are no further details about how many connections each hotspot can have, or if there is a data allowance per session (apart from the 3o-minute limit).
There will be around 1,000 trial sites that you can hook on around Summer before they launch the program in early 2015 (Telstra aims to have more than 2 million hotspots over the next 5 years). Once the program is launched, you can only hook to the free Wi-Fi by having a Telstra home broadband plan and participating in the program. Or if you are not a Telstra home broadband customer, you can pay to connect to these Fon-enabled Telstra Wi-Fi hotspots at a price.
More details about the free Telstra Wi-Fi trial can be read here.
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