Some of you may not know but Wired Country install the full 360 deg of transmitters on Sky Tower in April and have been testing it since then. The north and south have been in operational testing for a while and some ISPs have been offering service on request. The other 240 deg have been offered for service more recently and it's now official (see PR).

For those of you who don't know what the heck Wired Country are well they are operating an open access, LOS wireless network with sites in Hamilton, South Auckland and on Sky Tower (& some fibre in South Auckland I believe). In the case of Sky Tower, if you have a line of sight of the black band of Sky Tower and are within range you can probably get service. Read the PR for some idea of range altho be warned, those might be outer limits since I live perhaps 1km from the Henderson CBD but my signal is just slightly too weak.

There are some pretty decent plans (cf anything Telecom is offering) for residential users and non demading business users (probably demanding ones as well). Check out Ihug and EzySurf for good residential plans and ICONZ for cheap business plans with unlimited data but shared international bandwidth. I heard from one person that EzySurf/ICONZ has international latency issues so you might want to check this out if it matters. There are other ISPs too, check out the list at the Wired Country website, www.wiredcountry.com. Most or all do offer free national traffic. Currently phone service is in testing and haven't heard anything on the pricing altho without number portality, it's probably less attractive to many.

Installation cost from $80 upwards to ~$150 depending on ISP and whether you're a business or residential customer. Don't worry if you think you may be too far or whatever since you don't pay if you can't get service. You effectively rent the equipment so there is no other cost provided you have an ethernet card or a PPPoE enabled router. Most ISPs do have a 6 month minimum contract (for residential customers anyway). It's fixed LOS, so as you would expect, it does have an antenna and wiring so obviously you need to have permission to install the equipment.

For those not able to get service (like me), well if you live in the Auckland region don't get your hopes down. They won the PROBE for the Auckland region so are planning to expand coverage to all of Auckland (well with schools etc anyway)
For non Aucklanders, er sorry altho I have read they plan to expand coverage in Waikato at some stage. Although who knows, Telecom might suddenly realise they can offer more decent speeds at more decent prices?

For discussion related to Wired Country, it might be wise to resurrect the broadband list (http://unixathome.org/broadband/)

Press Release:

The Pukekohe based broadband company, which celebrated its first birthday last week, is now offering Auckland City Residents and Businesses access to its innovative network to its innovative network.

A subsidiary of the power lines company, Counties Power, Wired Country is proud to have one of the largest, fixed access, wireless Broadband networks in New Zealand. Wired Country provides services through Internet Service Provider (ISP) partners, which currently include ConceptNet, DTS, ICONZ, Ihug, The Packing Shed, Watchdog, Wave Internet, and WorldxChange. Wired Country’s network already covers tens of thousands of homes and businesses in Manurewa, Papakura, Pukekohe and Hamilton.

And thousands more, from Takapuna to Penrose South and out West to Henderson, are now able to access the network thanks to a Wired Country antenna on Auckland's SkyTower. Counties Power CEO Neil Simmonds says the launch of Wired Country in Auckland will offer huge benefits to customers.

Simmonds says people tapping into Wired Country’s network in Auckland will enjoy the same competitive pricing levels that the customers in Franklin and Hamilton receive. A great opportunity for a small town technology business, showing true entrepreneurial flair whilst, making its mark in the big city.

“We’re thrilled to be working with our partners to offer people in Auckland a greater choice when it comes to broadband services, as well as innovative and competitive pricing options,” Simmonds says. “Our decision to expand into Auckland was timely given yesterdays announcement by the government not to unbundle the local loop. Our partners can use our network to offer much more than the crippled internet service called bitstream Telecom is proposing."

The Wired Country Broadband network is true open access, which enables Telecom’s competitors to offer real broadband, voice, Fax, EFTPOS and all the services available on a modern broadband telecommunications network. We have customers today using our wireless network at 5Mbps, sending many Gigabytes of traffic, something not possible with the bitstream offering that Telecom is proposing”. The Wired Country network coverage will not stop with greater Auckland, as Wired Country have been named as the preferred supplier for the PROBE rollout in the Auckland Region. This will see coverage extended from the North of Rodney and to the South of Franklin.

Wired Country is looking forward to the next 12 months and clocking up more milestones in providing cost effective innovative ways for consumers to enjoy broadband connectivity.

 
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Received on Sat May 22 04:24:50 2004