Free Australia Wireless is a community project run by volunteers, rolling out free wireless Internet access across Australia. Our goal is to provide ubiquitous Internet, one neighbourhood at a time, starting with the major city CBD areas such as in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
Free Australia Wireless helps in the acquisition (through group buys) and installation of wireless networking hardware. We enable people to open up their WiFi networks in a way that keeps their LAN secure and private while also assimilating their own small network into larger mesh networks, making it easier for people to connect to the free wireless Internet network. By providing Internet everywhere, we hope to foster innovation, bridge the digital divide and quench our hunger for information and social interaction.
A Brief History
The idea of a (Sydney/Australia- based) community driven free wireless Internet probably first surfaced after Mark Pesce inspirational closing keynote speech “Mob Rules” at Web Directions South at the end of 2007. Earlier in the year, a couple of individuals already got on board of sharing their Internet connection, like Lachlan Hardy who wrote about his six month experience with his home Meraki setup on his blog mid October 2007.
Matthew Hall set up a Facebook group called Free Sydney Wireless after reading Lachlan Hardy’s post, to see if there was any interest out there in setting up Sydney-wide free wireless Internet using Meraki routers. Soon we had our first group buy, of about 30 Meraki’s. Some of these went to Canberra, Melbourne and Perth too. The first seeds of a community driven, free Internet got sown.
Because the Facebook group is a “walled garden” (only for Facebook members), and plenty of people don’t care for registering on Facebook, Jean-Jacques Halans set up a blog on www.freesydneywireless.com to aggregate ideas and articles on free Wifi and on Sydney-based events in particular, open to all to read. A Free Canberra Wireless blog by Nathanael Boehm followed soon after.
Mid November the news reached us that “the NSW Government’s plans to deliver a free wireless network trial for Sydney will be delayed due to complexities in sourcing a suitable network provider”, joining hundreds of other failed attempts at setting up municipal free wifi worldwide. They did trial free wifi successfully for a couple of weeks early 2008 at a number of Sydney libraries.
Early February 2008 a Sydney Morning Herald journalist picked up the Free Sydney Wireless blog and wrote an article about it on its Next section. This was our first exposure to the general public. That week the Facebook group grew from 150 to 350+ members (and is at 450+ currently). Because of the interest generated by the article, we try to group our individual efforts under a single umbrella organisation called “Free Australia Wireless” and make the most of the opportunities we are given.
Finally, in September 2008, during Web Directions South 2008, we introduce this website as a reference for people who want to start sharing their internet with their neighbours. This is only a starting point and we appreciate your feedback to improve this site and it’s content.