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New Zealand Converting Old Phone Booths Into National WiFi Network
An anonymous reader writes "What do you do with old public phone boxes hardly anyone uses? Convert them into a national network of WiFi hotspots is the answer in New Zealand. While others have converted their old phone booths into libraries, toilets, showers and even smoking booths, in New Zealand 700 hotspots will be live by 7 October with a target of 2000 by the middle of 2014. 1Gb of data will be free to customers of the incumbent operator, others have to pay for monthly access."
Last time I was in Hong Kong many of the phone booths were being used as APs for the phone companies pre-paid wifi network. Seemed like a great idea to make use of their even spread across the city.
They don't want their customers to have free wifi. They want their customers to have free wifi and everybody else passing every day by a 500kg reminder of them not being with the correct operator.
They pulled the doors off after a SCOTUS ruling showed that they were a private space with a legal expectation of privacy. Once the doors came off the communications were considered public and OK to record.
I do still miss the less trackable days of pagers and phone booths from a tinfoil hat point of view though.
You're missing the point. These locations already exist, have leases, power, data, and a visual presence. Hopefully paid data will help subsidise these dinosaurs. I haven't used one in almost a decade; it was before I had a cell phone and wanted to call someone that did have a cell phone without my (then) wife knowing about it. Even then the phone didn't take coins, so I had to go into the adjoining dairy (convenience store) to buy card, which I never used up. I sympathise a bit - just a bit - with Telecom as in our neighbourhood these phone boxes are routinely etched or the glass smashed. I have no idea how they've been making money for the last few years.
They did set this network up as free to use for all in the Canterbury area after the quakes, which I thought was nice.
PROTIP: if your first thought on reading about a project is "that's so flagrantly impractical as to be absurd", it is possible that you have misread it.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I vacationed in New Zealand and I only saw 1 phone booth the whole time I was there, and that was in Arrowtown, preserved as part of a mining town. Sooo, not that useful, really, since there aren't any phone booths.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I was one of those 175'000 customers who trialled it. And I have to say the speed was reasonable and you can't complain about free WiFi on the street. We were travelling NZ for 6 months and we used it all over the place. It tended to be the most reliable connection you could find, even better than sitting in a café and using their WiFi.
I know it's not that phone box model but converting them into a fleet of TARDIS would be far better. They could deliver you data before it has been sent. That's being fast!
Since you put this out there, I'm curious. Why didn't you want your wife to know? Planning a surprise party for her? Clandestine rendezvous? Buying something without approval?
I'm honestly curious...
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
If and when you need a 300-kilogram metal box with a 200-kilogram concrete slab under it for setting up a WiFi hotspot, you're a pretty lousy engineer.
Are you suggesting that good engineers wouldn't make use of existing weather protected, mapped, and maintained infrastructure if it suits the purpose?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Maybe it's not all about the box and more about the old phone lines in there. Not having to put down new wires has got to make setting up a network of hotspots much easier...
Meanwhile, in Sweden:
2007: Converting phone booths to hotspots: http://news.cision.com/teliasonera/r/sweden-s-telephone-booths-to-become-surfing-booths,c287332
2013: Telephone booths start to disappear, to be finished 2015: http://telekomidag.se/telefonkiosken-forsvinner-2015/
It is not profitable or useful to operate phone booths or hotspots when 3G is ubiquitous. In Sweden, we have internet access at any time, so there is no need at all for these artifacts. My bet is New Zealand will realise this soon enough.
No need to sympathize with Telecom. They are THE phone company in NZ, not just the payphone network. Telecom has most of the landline, mobile, and broadband business in NZ, and own the wires they lease to most of the other providers. So, they are not hurting over the demise of payphones.
The Telecom WiFi hotspots have been set up around NZ for a couple of years now. I guess it was a trial. Where I live in Nelson, there are at least two that I encounter often. They work, and they are free to everyone. I have used them several times when out shopping or getting a coffee. And I am not a Telecom customer.
This is about reusing existing infrastructure, not about a practical way to create something where there was nothing at all. Besides, how can you go wrong with a bit of extra space and security surrounding your equipment?
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!