Auckland City wi-fi goes live

Zones include Aotea Square, The Viaduct Basin, Westhaven, Karangahape Rd, Ponsonby, Parnell and Remuera

A new Auckland City wi-fi service has gone live. A partnership between Auckland City Council, telecoms provider Kordia and wi-fi hotspot provider Tomizone, the new service will initially operate in seven zones around the inner city.

The zones include Aotea Square, The Viaduct Basin, Westhaven, Karangahape Rd, Ponsonby, Parnell and Remuera. Further roll outs to more parts of the city will follow.

Kordia communications manager Emma Morrison said the network was switched in last night and testing this morning had gone well.

To gain access you simply turn on wi-fi discovery in your laptop where you will be presented by the option of gaining access to the Auckland City Council portal for free (where you can see information like public transport timetables) or to the internet at large via the Tomizone service. On the Tomizone splash page you enter your credit card details and choose between a $3 per hour charge, $6.50 for a day, or $30 for a week.

The network uses mesh technology so that there is no need to be in a specified hotspot to access it. Mesh works to create a network based on all participating radio towers in the network. This makes it more reliable and also offer redundancy. A mesh network is also self-healing.

The service is a public/private partnership with the city council providing rent free sites for the installation of the radio towers, thereby significantly reducing the cost of network set up. The network itself is based on the equipment and technology pioneered by private company Roam AD earlier this decade.

Emma Morrison said the initial goal was to get the network up and running in time for the Louis Vuitton challenge series taking place at the end of this month.