27 March 2004
WiFi for Australian conferences….yeah…right…
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Random thoughts .
Telstra and Staging Connections have put out a Press Release that shows a bit of foresight…(not a lot..but a bit)…announcing that they will be offering a “pay-as-you-use WiFi” service at major Autralian conferences.
When will Telco’s understand that they need to provide services like this for free to keep their current client base from switching…or at least use some logic that follows along the line of…”I am a Telstra BigPond cutomer at home or at work…so shouldn’t i be able to acess a Telstra / BigPond Wifi service anywhere in Australia as part of my monthly fee???”
Hey Telstra….if your listening…“that is a service i wouldn’t mind paying a little bit extra for on top of my monthly fee for my home ADSL…it would stop me from switching my home ADSL provider for a start…”
Now don’t get me wrong, i have no problem in paying for Wifi access. While in the US i was more than happy to fork out the $29US a month for accessing T-Mobile WiFi at StarBucks…but if i was a Telstra ADSL user at home, why should i have to pay another $29 to access a Telstra WiFi point???? I also have to mention, this ramble is because the WiFi spread into publicly accessable areas in Australia is pathetic….its almost prompted me to go around offering a WiFi service to cafes and other places in Sydney for a set-fee just so “i” can have access to WiFi in my favourite out-of-office / out-of-home locations….
Now thats not saying that at least some people aren’t trying their hardest to get WiFi off the ground over here….this week at the unwired sucess breakfast session at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art put on by Salesforce.com, Telstra and Intel, a push is starting to happen trying to educate people about the benfits of WiFi. Hop over to Mark Jones’s blog, “Filtered”, to read more about the unwired success session and to pick up the presentation he gave…
My addition to the conversation would be that its all fine and dandy to have WiFi in the office, buthe benefit is to the knoweldge worker who is on the road…i can still plug into an ethernet cable at the office if i have to, but its when i’m at a conference…at the airport….in a cafe…in a food court…that i really need access…and in my opinion, it all comes down to a value-add service by the telco’s.
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