End of free Telecom Wi-Fi

April 17, 2008 3:24 pm gman General

Well it seems that Telecom have finally ended the period of their own customers being able to access the Telecom Hotspots for free. I think it’s an extraordinarily bad move on their part, and removes the last benefit for wanting to go with Telecom for my broadband plan. I think it will also prove to be a dampener on all the cafes, bars and restaurants around town (apart from the other grumpy geeks around) – I’m certainly going to be less inclined to head down for a coffee, or go for a laptop lunch, and I suspect many others will too. When we move out of our place in Hay Street (this month?), I think it’s time to look at other service providers for better offerings.

4 Responses

  1. gman Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    And of course, by free, I’m happy to see connected customers using up data against their home or business plan caps.

  2. Frej Soya Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

    There actually exists IP over DNS implementations. DNS is quite often not blocked/restricted => free net.

    Quite hard to figure out the setup though 🙂

  3. Tony Reeves Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 4:03 pm

    Yet another example of monopolistic arrogance. At first I thought WTF, this is an NZ specific issue, what is it doing here. But of course monopolistic arrogance/stupidity by Telcos is not constrained by national boundaries.

  4. James Henstridge Says:
    April 17th, 2008 at 4:08 pm

    When I was last in NZ, the hotel had some networking glitches so gave us some cards to connect to the local Telecom hotspot.

    I was really surprised that the NZ$20 card only gave me 2 hours of service. I can’t imagine paying that much for connectivity out of my own pocket. I don’t suppose they’ll drop those prices now that they expect everyone to pay? 🙂