Dunedin's Octagon will be home to free and fast gigabit Wi-Fi from Monday, with several other sites around the city to follow.
A series of infrastructure changes were needed to bring the Octagon's Wi-Fi up to speed, including running fibre into surrounding buildings and wiring in new gigabit ''access points'', Dunedin City Council corporate services group manager Sandy Graham said.
The result was the technology being ''switched on'' on Monday for testing and refining.
It was expected public access would be available in September before an official launch of the Octagon service, expected in October.
The free high-speed Wi-Fi was a ''great opportunity'' for the city to showcase the new technology, she said.
It was expected the Wi-Fi's data cap over a 24-hour period would be 5GB.
Plans were also under way, in partnership with the Digital Community Trust and community groups, to add gigabit Wi-Fi to several other areas around the city, including outside Dunedin's core urban area, although those plans were still in their early stages, Ms Graham said.
More concrete were plans to get the free high-speed Wi-Fi into Toitu Otago Settlers Museum and the Dunedin Public Library, which were expected to be next in line for the treatment.
The aim was to have free Wi-Fi access available seamlessly across the city as more and more sites were enabled, Ms Graham said.
