WIFI in Australia - TravelPUNK Backpacker College Student Budget Travel Message Boards!

MIKEHONCHO · 02-02-2008, 03:00 PM

I was wondering if there are alot of wifi area's in Australia for my laptop and which company is the best to subscribe to get the hotspots
thanks

**raoulduke** · 02-02-2008, 04:53 PM

Do you mean like wireless internet or WLAN's like you get in starbucks and cafe's and stuff?

Wireless networks are everywhere that you can connect to without needing a contract or anything, as for the wireless internet type it's still pretty pricey here but check out:

www.bigpond.com.au
www.optusnet.com.au

MIKEHONCHO · 02-02-2008, 05:22 PM

yah the wirelesshotspotsyou can get in starbucks
thanks

**raoulduke** · 02-02-2008, 06:02 PM

Yeah they're everywhere man, especially in the cities.

*I do not in any way endorse the patronage of starbucks, ever. Even if it is free internet.*

**MolsonGirl** · 02-03-2008, 03:18 PM

Haha I was just thinking the same thing. I have telstra here in Wollongong but I'm heading out west to Wellington for almost two weeks and was getting a bit panicky about internet as I have school work that needs to be done and submitted while I"m out there. I'm sure the school I'm working at will have it.

to be honest I was shocked at the internet here in Aus.. so expensive still.

**raoulduke** · 02-03-2008, 10:57 PM

Yeah our net here is shit. There is a whole government debate going on to upgrade the infrastructure.

SGRHewitt · 02-04-2008, 07:27 AM

I apologize for hijacking the thread, but whats up with Australia's mobile service? I'm looking at vodafone right now and they charge by the 30 seconds for calls? That seems quite steep.

**raoulduke** · 02-07-2008, 02:27 AM

I've got a cap on my phone so I've got no idea what calls cost. It probably is steep compared to the US though. Mobile phones only launched in Australia about a year ago...

**LaurieL622** · 02-07-2008, 09:11 AM

a year ago!??!?!

r u sure????

**maracle** · 02-07-2008, 09:35 AM

Per 30 seconds is better if it's half the cost that a minute would be, that way a call that is 1 minute and 1 second only gets you charged for 1:30 instead of 2:00.

I guess I can't really remember whether people had cell phones when I was there but it seems hard to believe it would have been rare....seems like Australia is the perfect place for it, you can cover 90% of the population by putting towers in like 5 cities.

But I guess raoulduke would know better than us

**raoulduke** · 02-07-2008, 03:24 PM

Maybe I was exaggerating a little,

we do tend to be a bit behind though.

SGRHewitt · 02-07-2008, 03:31 PM

Wowzers... I see that Virgin Mobile charges like 10cents a minute or something. Thats much better. Granted I can't understand half the words they talk about in these contracts, seems like they use a completely different language compared to how our cell phone deals work haha.

snodogj · 08-10-2008, 04:47 AM

Any service is pretty expensive in Australia. Internet, mobile phones (landlines too!), cable...

Basically, you have the population of New York in a landmass the size of the Continental US. While there are a lot of areas that are so thinly populated that they don't bother setting them up and we can leave them out of the equation, the populated areas still have significantly less density than most of the world's developed nations. When they put the infrastructure for these services in place, the cost per subscriber is, because of the low population density, much higher than the rest of the world is used to.

Population densities:
Australia: 2.6 people/km2
USA: 31 people/km2
UK: 246 people/km2

That means that when equipment is set up to cover a certain area, The Australian service providers only have 1/12 the number of people as they would in the USA and 1/94 as many as they would in the UK from which to recoup those equipment (and maintenance) costs. It sucks, but it makes sense that it costs a hell of a lot more.

Aside from explaining the insane rates of both mobile service and internet service, another side effect is that there are fewer open wifi signals. In the US, a lot of folks leave their wifi networks open and those who don't usually close their networks because of security fears. In Australia, where costs are higher, plans offer less bandwidth and throttling comes earlier, a lot of people who might otherwise share their connection, close their network because of the insane cost of letting folks use their wifi.

That said, you should be able to find free wifi pretty easily in most CBDs with little more than a cup of coffee.