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Niue Gets Island-Wide WiFi
NinjaPablo writes "Business Wire is running a story about the polynesian island of Niue. Niue has just completed an island-wide wifi network, making it the first country with nationwide free wifi access. This comes after countrywide email was started in 1997, dialup access in 1999, and broadband this Spring, all free for anyone."
Island... beach... free internet...
Where do I sign up?
"Niue - Wardriving Made Easy"
Karma: Oldschool
But come on now, that doesn't even count! 2000 people? The UC Berkeley system is ten times that, and they're even thinking of installing campus-wide wifi.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Umm no, rtfa.
.NU domain names to develop and fund free Internet services for all the people of Niue."
"This new free wireless service which can be accessed by all Niue residents, tourists, government offices and business travelers, is being provided at no cost to the public or local government."
"IUS-N, a US-incorporated, private charitable foundation locally managed in Niue, was established in 1997 to use revenue from registration of
There's a good snippet from the article which explains why they went for wireless over wired:
WiFi is the perfect fit for the Island of Niue, where harsh weather conditions of rain, lightning, salt water, and high humidity cause major problems with underground copper lines
It later goes on to talk about 'cyclone season', so I guess you could safely add wind to that list. Watch the pringles cans fly off into the stratosphere!
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Spammers can make use of the unrestricted wifi to spam to their hearts delight.
Would the place become a base for spam corporations?
Did it strike anybody as strange that they gave nationwide email to a country two years *before* they gave dialup?
What good is email if you can't access the internet?
( BW)(INTERNET-USERS-SOCIETY) Polynesian Island of Niue the First Free Wireless Nation; Wireless HotSpot Launched in South Pacific Island of Niue
.NU domain names to develop and fund free Internet services for all the people of Niue. The Internet Users Society - Niue (IUS-N) was designated to administer the .NU top level domain (TLD), commonly known as the .NU Country Code TLD (ccTLD), by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), in early 1997. The IUS-N is a private, tax exempt charitable foundation, which was founded in 1997 by J. William
Business Editors/High-Tech Writers
Alofi, Niue, THE SOUTH PACIFIC--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 23, 2003--The Internet Users Society - Niue (IUS-N), today announced that it has launched the world's first free nation-wide WiFi Internet access service on the Polynesian island-nation of Niue. This new free wireless service which can be accessed by all Niue residents, tourists, government offices and business travelers, is being provided at no cost to the public or local government.
"WiFi is the prefect fit for the Island of Niue, where harsh weather conditions of rain, lightning, salt water, and high humidity cause major problems with underground copper lines," said Richard St Clair, Co-Founder and Technical Manager at The Internet Users Society - Niue and Chairman, Pacific Island Chapter ISOC. "And since WiFi is a license free technology by International Agreement, no license is needed either by the provider or the user."
WiFi, 802.11 or IEEE 802.11 is a type of radio technology used for wireless local area networks, based on a standard developed by the IEEE for local and wire networks within the 802.11 section. WiFi 802.11 is composed of several standards operating in different frequencies.
A substantial portion of Niue's tourism comes from visiting yacht traffic during the non-cyclone season. Yachts with onboard computer equipment with WiFi cards and external antennas will be able to park in the harbor and access full Internet services from their vessels as an open node, also free of charge. Other visitors, consultants and tourists to the island who carry laptops with either built in WiFi or as an add-on, will also have the ability to connect to the open node free of charge for the duration of their stay. Local Internet users with recent-vintage laptops will find the built in wireless features useful as more areas are covered with RF, and users who may be in the more congested telephone circuit locales such as Alofi central will also benefit from the new technology. One government office is already hooked up to the WiFi service and it is expected others will join in as soon as the appropriate hardware is installed.
IUS-N continues to be a leader in developing appropriate technologies to enable low-cost, dependable Internet services for all, for small nations like Niue. IUS-N technology is a model for other providers to use in developing nations that face the same hostile weather environments and where there are restrictions on the older technologies for wireless Internet services or where license costs are very high. Because these are low-power RF (Radio Frequency) transmitters, plus they consume small amounts of electricity, the technology is appropriate for smaller nations like Niue.
WiFi is the latest free service offer by the IUS-N to all the people in Niue. In 1997, the IUS-N first introduced free Email services to the nation and subsequently launched free full Internet access services in 1999. Earlier this spring free broadband Internet services were deployed at its Internet Cafe in Niue.
For more information and a topographical network map please see:
http://www.niue.nu/images/Nuiepaper38.pdf
About The Internet Users Society - Niue
IUS-N, a US-incorporated, private charitable foundation locally managed in Niue, was established in 1997 to use revenue from registration of
With the limited range of WiFi, they'd need a station in every house, and the financial burden of an undertaking like that would be immense. I'd imagine that, since they have broadband, they can cut some pretty cheap bulk deals around maybe $50 per station, but the costs would still be astronomical, and from the looks of the article, they are saying that there is a blanket of WiFi over the ENTIRE island. Essentially, everywhere you see a transformer on a telephone, you'd have to see a base station, but really, the interference from such electricity would cause problems, so they probably alternate. I am guessing that other than by taxes, the biggest way they are paying for all of this is from tourism, which apparently is large for such a small island. I'm betting that within two years, they'd be able to pay off the addition, and after that, it would merely be a matter of the funds to maintain the system, which will also get costly.
I came, I saw, She conquered.
Yachts with onboard computer equipment with WiFi cards and external antennas will be able to park in the harbor and access full Internet services from their vessels as an open node, also free of charge.
Cool! Now all I need to do is buy a yacht and I will have _free internet access_! Saving $50 per month in broadband fees, I'll have a ROI on the yacht within 83 years. ($50000 yacht)
A substantial portion of Niue's tourism comes from visiting yacht traffic during the non-cyclone season.
So you mean there's a cyclone season as well? Damn..
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
No.. but probably a lot of the money came from Sweden.. since the .nu-domain is quite popular here. (FYI. in swedish the word nu means now)
- I choked on the red pill and now I'm stuck in limbo
www.niue.nu is very very slow. Please stay away.
.nu domain to be sold as domain registrations on the open global market. The resources generated by those sales would then be used to develop and maintain the Internet services on Niue. After a few set backs and a lot of hard work, we brought the email-only services on-line and opened to the Niuean public in March of 1997 after some weeks of testing.
Here's their history page:
Savage Island Network History Niue (pronounced 'new-way') is a small Island in the South Pacific located at around 169 West by 19 South, and is so very isolated, the problem of Internet services has been a difficult one to say the very least. All overseas connections are expensive, bandwidth is very limited (and again, expensive).
Local communication until a few years ago involved small phones with cranks on the side in most villages. Telecom Niue eventually upgraded those connections and local switching services improved as well. This made it possible to consider electronic communications as a possibility and it didn't take long to create local interest in where that could go.
Development of the first version of the Savage Island Network began around January of 1995. At that time, the original system ran as a standard BBS (RABBS) running under Digital Research DOS, and was configured as a local only (intranet)email, file server and BBS service. Dubbed the Savage Island Network after the original name given to the Island of Niue by Captain Cook, that system ran 24 hours a day 7 days a week and provided the first electronic communications of it's kind on Niue, primarily to the government of Niue's internal administrative infrastructure and a handful of users interested in data communications.
With only twenty to thirty users, the privately owned Savage Island Network was the beginning of telecommunications development on Niue and served as a training tool and learning environment for the local users as well as those who assumed the challenge of things to come and the need to be familiar with new technologies. Interestingly enough, that system logged an enourmous number of calls with what by Niue standards was a very high level of communication traffic. The need was there-potential seen.
That system was replaced with a 32 bit version of the WildCat BBS system, and the users found themselves fast into the world of HTML and other "new look and feel" interfaces. Still it was a local only BBS running file services, ftp, news groups email and in general, being used as a teaching tool for the fifty or so users on-line. Government departments could exchange data electronically without printing it, or traveling to other departments on the Island. Value was beginning to show, traffic was on the increase and the user base was building.
Enter Internet User's Society........
About the time that my personal resources were starting to feel the sting of the legendary "self funded" hobby, and also during the time when ideas for an affordable world wide connection for our services were running low, the Government of Niue introduced me to the Internet User's Society in Boston Massachusetts. After many discussions with government officials and other interested parties on Niue, it was decided that the project would continue, as a private sector development, and Savage Island Network would join forces with the Internet User's Society to form the Internet Users Society Niue, in order to complete the task of bringing world wide email and Internet services to Niue.
The fundamental plan was to set up the ccTLD
Now after some years of on-line time with world wide email services we are finally seeing the Internet as a standard communications utility. With full Internet services to Niue, and progress and development of world wide communications services, the IT development on Niue can continue as planned. Our systems continue to improve, and the services have been opened up to all permanent Niuean residents and the gov
So we've got wardriving and warflying or whatever, so what do we call this? Warsailing, waryachting, warboating...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I own several .nu domains myself, and they don't come cheap (to just change your dns server listings - or any other setting - costs $10 [which can be avoided by waiting until it comes time to renew the domain]). I'm just glad to hear that all that money is going to a good cause, unlike many other tlds such as .ws, .tv, etc. which are marketed as entirely american and without any significant benifit to the countries for which they were originally created.
When you can just make shit up?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Is this a first? Has /. taken out an entire nation?
for ships out at sea for extended periods of time (or just passing by), they can take a quick run to Niue and drop off/pick up their email without having to dock..
I'm dying to know the details. From companies perspectives there are enough 'problems' with the flat rate model that many are switching to caps or per GB charges, so would free bandwidth be even 'worse'?
Basically, what's the speed, and how do they deal with serious users?
Tierce
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
Nieu News Knew New Wieu-Fieu.
I don't think they will have enough serious users to pose a problem. Most of the people are plantation farmers (or so says the CIA) so I can't imagine they have much time to go bandwidth-crazy.
Also, the purchasing power isn't too terribly large ($7.6 mil, or $3600 per person per year) so they probably can't buy too many computers.
I wish the proceeds from the sale of all .com, .org, and .net domains went to giving US citizens free (and anonymous) net access.
...if they ever considered using ALOHA instead of WiFi.
Well, they are 259 square km, so it's not exactly tiny. Oh, and they arn't chock full of some of the leaders in computing today (a la Berkely).
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
See how much better things work in small societies where everyone feels like a significant part of the whole? This is why we Americans need to lay the smack down on our Federal government and give the power (read "money") back to our state and local governments. If your city council got the lion's share of your tax dollars, you might have free Wi-Fi, too.
Screw this blood-for-oil bullshit! I want my free Wi-Fi!
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
That if we parked a yacht offshore and started up Kazaa.. it'd be giving a whole new meaning to coastal piracy.