Free public WiFi has been made available outdoors in the Melbourne city centre including Bourke St Mall, Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Melbourne Museum and on platforms at Melbourne’s city train stations. The network provides a combined coverage zone of over 600,000 square metres across the three cities, making it the largest outdoor free public WiFi network of its kind in Australia.
In just 11 months since VicFreeWiFi was launched in Melbourne over 100 terabytes of data has been downloaded by Victorians and tourists visiting Melbourne, Bendigo and Ballarat.
The Victorian Government is looking at doing more with free public WiFi being piloted in Melbourne, Ballarat and Bendigo.
The WiFi hotspots are installed on poles, public transport infrastructure, and public buildings to virtually blanket the city centres of each of the cities.
Each hotspot provides fast, free WiFi for anyone in range. By selecting the VicFreeWiFi network on your device and accepting the terms and conditions, each user is automatically connected to every other VicFreeWiFi hotspot they get within range of.
The number of users accessing the internet through VicFreeWiFi has steadily increased since the network was publicly launched in Melbourne September 2016, and more locations are expected to get free WiFi in the next few years.
As VicFreeWiFi enters its second year, here’s a look at some figures on the system so far (all data is current as of 31 August 2017):
- 13.5 million WiFi sessions served to date.
- 101 terabytes of data transferred to date, roughly the equivalent of streaming four years of high definition video on Netflix.
- 21 minutes is the average time people spend browsing on VicFreeWiFi each time they connect.
