Free Wi-Fi sparks national interest

The Dunedin City Council's free Octagon Wi-Fi initiative has gone extremely well in its first six months of operation, with other centres throughout the country now looking to Dunedin for support in setting up their own wireless internet hubs, a DCC manager says.

The council launched the Octagon Wi-Fi service in May at a cost of $8500, with the intention of funding it for 12 months.

It was hoped after that period a private interest would step forward to take over the $700-a-month operating cost of the service.

DCC customer services agency manager William Robertson said although exact usage figures were unavailable, the service had been going extremely well and had seen a good take-up of registrations.

"The service saw steady usage throughout winter from locals but now with the cruise-ship season here this will be the first real test of the system.

So far it's doing exactly what we thought it would do but we expect things will pick up even more over the summer when the Octagon becomes more of a hub of activity again.

There was already a noticeable increase in the number of registrations on the system when the first ship of the season came in last week."

Mr Robertson said one of the most encouraging things was that other city councils were now starting to do the same thing.

"Wellington City Council is taking up the idea now and so is Hamilton.

"Hamilton came down to have a look at the proposal documents we drew up to implement the service and Christchurch City Council has been in touch with us now, too."

An awareness campaign to increase the visibility of the service for visitors to the city, and the Octagon in general, would begin next week, he said.

There were no signs advertising the service in the Octagon at present and promotional material had been kept to a minimum to keep costs down.

Mr Robertson said although no private interest had yet been expressed in taking over the service, it was still early days.

"We're only six months into the service now and we won't really be able to gauge things until the visitor season really picks up, when businesses will be better placed to see that it's being used.

"Hopefully in the next six months someone will come to us and say this makes sense and offer to take it over."

Mr Robertson said it would be up to the new council to decide whether or not to continue the service if no private interests came forward, but the ease of the service meant it was likely someone would express interest before then.

"The great thing is it's worked exactly as we said it would and there haven't been any cost explosions.

It's costing exactly what we said it would and there have been no major technical difficulties either.

"Because we're working with a local provider [Unifone], any problems which have popped up have been caught quickly and resolved usually before anyone even knew there was a glitch."

Although the economic benefits of the service would always be difficult to evaluate, the service would reflect well on the city, he said.

"Following up the economic benefits was always going to be a grey area.

"You can gauge some things through the registration survey by looking at who's logging on and how they're using it but a lot of the benefit will come from the prestige factor of having the service in the city."