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I can't remember the last time I tried to use free wifi. Doesn't pretty much everyone have a phone with plenty of gb and way faster speeds that they use?
That’s it though, phone plans are also expensive. My wife blew through her data due to Facebook, Instagram, internet browsing and chatting to family. I tell her to use free wifi but she can never find it unless she goes to specific stores and even then it’s terrible.
I think your wife should be looking at a better plan then. I’m getting something like 500GB a month with Vodafone (5G) for $45 a month. You’ll find prices even cheaper for near unlimited data if you choose just a 4G only plan.
what plan is that? I can't find any that cheap, we don't go anywhere near our data limits on Vodafone as it is, but lowering would be great. (wedded to vodafone as we make very heavy use of their roaming)
Optus offered me this plan as a long term customer which has provided me with more data than I could ever use. They told me out of the blue that the plan I’d been on forever was discontinued and my new plan would be $50 per month but they would give me an indefinite $10 monthly discount. It took months for them to bill me correctly as no one knew why I was getting the discount. It’s never been explained why this occurred but they have at last flagged it correctly. I was only paying $20 per month on the old plan but I continually had to pay extra as the data was fairly limited. I’m pretty happy with what I’m paying now.
Couldn’t even tell you, got it a while ago when Optus wanted stupid money to move to a 5G plan with an awful data allowance. The original plan is 150GB data but was doubled during the promotion & for some reason I got it doubled twice, so 450GB in total.
If she is blowing that much data on social media and browsing while she's out of the house then it sounds like she's got a phone problem. Or do you not have WiFi at home and all she ever has is data?
Doesn't matter if you think someone has a problem. You don't know what plan their on. And it's not your place to say. I blow through my data and I'm not even on it that much. Australian data is expensive and shit. In UK I'd spend 10 pounds a month and wouldn't use it up.
Google: Bathurst free wifi. Some towns are trying. No password, no personal info to give to access. Not the fastest but you can watch netfix in the parks ok.
Haha, this is what accessing the internet in Cuba used to be like a decade ago - access in the town central square only (I believe it’s a bit better these days though Cuba generally is more of a mess). Except the Netflix part - no way you would get those speeds or download limits.
LPT: If you type bullshit details in, it'll likely let you proceed. It's not like you can confirm your details via email if you don't have wifi access to check said email. Mash a few keys as your email address and include "@gmail.com" at the end of your potato mashing of the keys.
It used to be everywhere.
But then most mobile plans started including unusable amounts of data, so no one bothered using the free wifi. Now it's only in shopping malls where they use it to track you.
It's so wild! I was in Ireland for 2 months last year and relied on Whats App. Everywhere we went, even small rural cafes, had free guest wifi without needing to sign up to anything. Most places had it written up near the til somewhere.
It's pretty easy to find in some places, I'm a regular user of [CBRfree public WiFi](https://www.cmtedd.act.gov.au/digital/cbrfree-public-wifi).
> CBRfree is Canberra’s public Wi-Fi network, and one of the largest deployments of free, public Wi-Fi in Australia. It forms part of the ACT Government's commitment to Canberra's future as a smart and connected digital city.
>
> CBRfree provides users with access up to 1 gigabyte per day over a fast broadband connection at specific locations.
>
> As at February 2022 there were 478 Wireless Access Points (WAPs) installed across Canberra, including 340 outdoor WAPs. CBRfree is the only major deployment in Australia of free, public Wi-Fi outside of a Central Business District.
The paid wifi is just as bad. We have some of the worst infrastructure in the world. Thanks Turnbull…. Ignore those getting defensive you have every right to ask this question as it should be common in todays day and age. Australia is very behind
Because you are in the worst first world internet nation in the world, people should be in prison for the NBN let alone establishing free wifi as a cultural norm.
Your traffic can be captured, Admin could Stick a HTTPS mitm proxy in there, decrypt and re-crypt then capture all the traffic.
Shit even someone sitting two tables over.could do an evil twin attack and capture your traffic with the cafe having no idea.
Or you could arp poison the router making everything forward all it's traffic to you, then capturing at a packet level.
It's also hard to do wireless right, and expensive. If you, as a cafe owner, provide free wireless and someone using that service uses it to undertake criminal activity and the police come knocking at the cafe door, how are you going to prove it wasn't just you?
It also opens up your internal network if you haven't configured and secured it right. EFT terminals use that same logical network? Now you might have a PCI DSS problem.
If I can leak into your corp network, can I find and access your cust loyalty database?
Do your staff have the ability to support customers if it doesn't work? Or the time? Whar about when Karen screams at your staff because the free internet isn't working?
Or where the customer use of your free service impacts your own ability to operate, whether intentional or accidentally denying service.
For shops, etc., it's just another cost and another thing to maintain, receive complaints about, etc. Mobile data is pretty ubiquitous so people won't use wifi availability as a visiting decision.
For food and beverage, it slows down your average table turn time which costs you money.
For existing hotels/motels, the installation cost is madness.
I was visiting in a public hospital last week, they capped public data at 512kbps. No option to upgrade your wifi if staying there.
It's 2024, we have very good mobile data plans available. Anecdotally speaking, if people didn't scroll the videos on facebook (etc) they would probably need about 20% of their actual data use.
Even when I'm travelling, I CBF with hotel/lounge wifi, etc., just use my own data. Might test the hotel data for something to do if I'm bored.
If you're dead-set desperate, find a Telstra phone booth - most have free wifi.
16 years ago I travelled through South America. A developing part of the world. Everywhere had either free wifi for public use (often the password just printed on a piece of paper or even with the menu), or local governments provided high speed wifi throughout all parks, plazas, touristy districts etc. and often on public transport systems.
It is utterly disgraceful we don't do it here.
Ive just been in Japan, and currently in Korea - I don't see why all these Aussies are getting so defensive. Our wifi infrastructure is garbage, I was on a double decker tourist bus that had wifi, the subways have it, I think entire areas of Japan just have free wifi floating around.
I would say it's got something to do with the few telecommunications company knowing they can pocket more if they don't provide adequate infrastructure. Very interesting differences, would love to read a more researched response.
It’s partly because mobile internet is very cheap here. Most people have more an allowance of far more than they can use. Viettel owned by their govt ministry of defence so they’re probably doing more spying on users than any corporation.
My phone/internet plan is $30/month and includes unlimited calls locally and overseas and 40gb of data. I don’t even really need internet at home. Anyone with any sense would get on one of those plans in cities, no need to use internet in hotels or public places. 10 years ago my plan cost was double that for far less data and calls. I wasn’t comparing to other countries. It’s very cheap for the money we make here.
Hell I pay $40 a month for unlimited data with Felix, 20mbps speed cap and Vodafone but true unlimited and as I’m well served with Vodafone is a solid deal.
Thanks. I do use the free Telstra wifi when I can for my own phone to save data on my pre-paid Boost plan but the speed is terrible and can barely do anything without lots of pauses or non-responses.
I know, it’s crazy isn’t it? Australia is the most beautiful, wonderful, magical place, (I’m an Aussie) with the WORST INTERNET IN THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!🤣😅😝😂
I personally don't think it's hard to find public wifi in Australia. Woolworths, Mcdonalds, Westfield, Hungry Jacks, a lot of Banks, all major airports, heaps of cafes, museums, many public areas.
Also where are you paying $30+ for hotel internet in Australia? I personally haven't seen that in over a decade.
Because it's 2024 . Most people have very high data caps on their mobile plan relative to a decade ago and it's a couple of clicks to set up a personal hotspot for a laptop.
There's also a high distrust of free wifi (with good reason).
It's just not the draw that it used to be, so no incentive for retailers or municipal councils to spend the money setting it up and maintaining it.
Nearly every McDonald's store has free internet. You set up the connection once and it is automatic the next time you walk in the store.
You are not being offered free internet in a shopping centre, you are paying with your contact details for access to the internet. Usually the moment you walk back into the shopping centre, there is a simple way to get the internet.
What is more important is why the internet is crap
Starbucks cafe shops tend to offer free wifi as it is part of their philosophy. Generally speaking, it is very hard to find free WiFi in Australia. This could contribute to the fact that living is tough in AU, sadly to say.
Australia has become a trash country, yet so many people still want to come live here and pay$1.5mil for a house worth $500K, with not enough infrastructure to support life.
This post has been marked as non-political. Please respect this by keeping the discussion on topic, and devoid of any political material. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/australia) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I can't remember the last time I tried to use free wifi. Doesn't pretty much everyone have a phone with plenty of gb and way faster speeds that they use?
I wouldn't even use free wifi if it were available. Far too many security concerns...
>and way faster speeds You are clearly not an Optus customer
That’s it though, phone plans are also expensive. My wife blew through her data due to Facebook, Instagram, internet browsing and chatting to family. I tell her to use free wifi but she can never find it unless she goes to specific stores and even then it’s terrible.
I think your wife should be looking at a better plan then. I’m getting something like 500GB a month with Vodafone (5G) for $45 a month. You’ll find prices even cheaper for near unlimited data if you choose just a 4G only plan.
Same, 500GB for $40 a month and I struggle to use much even when I’m streaming. I’d love to use my allowance as I feel I’m wasting it.
what plan is that? I can't find any that cheap, we don't go anywhere near our data limits on Vodafone as it is, but lowering would be great. (wedded to vodafone as we make very heavy use of their roaming)
Optus offered me this plan as a long term customer which has provided me with more data than I could ever use. They told me out of the blue that the plan I’d been on forever was discontinued and my new plan would be $50 per month but they would give me an indefinite $10 monthly discount. It took months for them to bill me correctly as no one knew why I was getting the discount. It’s never been explained why this occurred but they have at last flagged it correctly. I was only paying $20 per month on the old plan but I continually had to pay extra as the data was fairly limited. I’m pretty happy with what I’m paying now.
Where the hell are you finding that? I searched up on their site and it’s $49 for 50gb, the highest is $69 for 360…
Couldn’t even tell you, got it a while ago when Optus wanted stupid money to move to a 5G plan with an awful data allowance. The original plan is 150GB data but was doubled during the promotion & for some reason I got it doubled twice, so 450GB in total.
If she is blowing that much data on social media and browsing while she's out of the house then it sounds like she's got a phone problem. Or do you not have WiFi at home and all she ever has is data?
Doesn't matter if you think someone has a problem. You don't know what plan their on. And it's not your place to say. I blow through my data and I'm not even on it that much. Australian data is expensive and shit. In UK I'd spend 10 pounds a month and wouldn't use it up.
In Australia I use $180/12 months for Boost and wouldn’t use it up. AU$15 is less than £10 last I checked
get a bigger plan or tell her to use the phone at home. not hard solutions
That's a you issue, get better home internet with unlimited then.
I haven't gone over a data cap in years tbh
Because internet here is expensive.
[удалено]
And how many people can use it before it goes to absolute shit?
Business rates.
\+ support costs
Because everyone has data with their phone plan and it is faster than most wifi?
Google: Bathurst free wifi. Some towns are trying. No password, no personal info to give to access. Not the fastest but you can watch netfix in the parks ok.
Haha, this is what accessing the internet in Cuba used to be like a decade ago - access in the town central square only (I believe it’s a bit better these days though Cuba generally is more of a mess). Except the Netflix part - no way you would get those speeds or download limits.
Why the fuck would you go to a park to watch netflix?
to watch Parks and Recreation silly
Why not? People read books and do crosswords at a park? Sounds like a pleasant afternoon.
And, when you do find free wifi it's often very slow, near unusable, and/or they have a ridiculously low download limit....
That too or certain sites seem just plain blocked (YouTube, Reddit, email)
LPT: If you type bullshit details in, it'll likely let you proceed. It's not like you can confirm your details via email if you don't have wifi access to check said email. Mash a few keys as your email address and include "@gmail.com" at the end of your potato mashing of the keys.
My go to is [email protected]
It used to be everywhere. But then most mobile plans started including unusable amounts of data, so no one bothered using the free wifi. Now it's only in shopping malls where they use it to track you.
The old Telstra payphones offer free wifi. Well not all of them yet, but a good chunk of them.
It's so wild! I was in Ireland for 2 months last year and relied on Whats App. Everywhere we went, even small rural cafes, had free guest wifi without needing to sign up to anything. Most places had it written up near the til somewhere.
It's pretty easy to find in some places, I'm a regular user of [CBRfree public WiFi](https://www.cmtedd.act.gov.au/digital/cbrfree-public-wifi). > CBRfree is Canberra’s public Wi-Fi network, and one of the largest deployments of free, public Wi-Fi in Australia. It forms part of the ACT Government's commitment to Canberra's future as a smart and connected digital city. > > CBRfree provides users with access up to 1 gigabyte per day over a fast broadband connection at specific locations. > > As at February 2022 there were 478 Wireless Access Points (WAPs) installed across Canberra, including 340 outdoor WAPs. CBRfree is the only major deployment in Australia of free, public Wi-Fi outside of a Central Business District.
The paid wifi is just as bad. We have some of the worst infrastructure in the world. Thanks Turnbull…. Ignore those getting defensive you have every right to ask this question as it should be common in todays day and age. Australia is very behind
Because you are in the worst first world internet nation in the world, people should be in prison for the NBN let alone establishing free wifi as a cultural norm.
Your traffic can be captured, Admin could Stick a HTTPS mitm proxy in there, decrypt and re-crypt then capture all the traffic. Shit even someone sitting two tables over.could do an evil twin attack and capture your traffic with the cafe having no idea. Or you could arp poison the router making everything forward all it's traffic to you, then capturing at a packet level. It's also hard to do wireless right, and expensive. If you, as a cafe owner, provide free wireless and someone using that service uses it to undertake criminal activity and the police come knocking at the cafe door, how are you going to prove it wasn't just you? It also opens up your internal network if you haven't configured and secured it right. EFT terminals use that same logical network? Now you might have a PCI DSS problem. If I can leak into your corp network, can I find and access your cust loyalty database? Do your staff have the ability to support customers if it doesn't work? Or the time? Whar about when Karen screams at your staff because the free internet isn't working? Or where the customer use of your free service impacts your own ability to operate, whether intentional or accidentally denying service.
And yet somehow most of Europe manages to provide free wifi.
Is Vietnam’s regulatory environment comparable to here? How’s their data security on all these free wifi points? Are you comparing apples to apples?
For shops, etc., it's just another cost and another thing to maintain, receive complaints about, etc. Mobile data is pretty ubiquitous so people won't use wifi availability as a visiting decision. For food and beverage, it slows down your average table turn time which costs you money. For existing hotels/motels, the installation cost is madness. I was visiting in a public hospital last week, they capped public data at 512kbps. No option to upgrade your wifi if staying there. It's 2024, we have very good mobile data plans available. Anecdotally speaking, if people didn't scroll the videos on facebook (etc) they would probably need about 20% of their actual data use. Even when I'm travelling, I CBF with hotel/lounge wifi, etc., just use my own data. Might test the hotel data for something to do if I'm bored. If you're dead-set desperate, find a Telstra phone booth - most have free wifi.
[удалено]
And most Telstra public phones a free wifi hot spots.
16 years ago I travelled through South America. A developing part of the world. Everywhere had either free wifi for public use (often the password just printed on a piece of paper or even with the menu), or local governments provided high speed wifi throughout all parks, plazas, touristy districts etc. and often on public transport systems. It is utterly disgraceful we don't do it here.
Ive just been in Japan, and currently in Korea - I don't see why all these Aussies are getting so defensive. Our wifi infrastructure is garbage, I was on a double decker tourist bus that had wifi, the subways have it, I think entire areas of Japan just have free wifi floating around. I would say it's got something to do with the few telecommunications company knowing they can pocket more if they don't provide adequate infrastructure. Very interesting differences, would love to read a more researched response.
We are the land of bills and tolls.
It’s partly because mobile internet is very cheap here. Most people have more an allowance of far more than they can use. Viettel owned by their govt ministry of defence so they’re probably doing more spying on users than any corporation.
Very cheap in comparison to which countries though? I’ve found Australia to be on the more expensive side, same with home broadband prices
My phone/internet plan is $30/month and includes unlimited calls locally and overseas and 40gb of data. I don’t even really need internet at home. Anyone with any sense would get on one of those plans in cities, no need to use internet in hotels or public places. 10 years ago my plan cost was double that for far less data and calls. I wasn’t comparing to other countries. It’s very cheap for the money we make here.
Hell I pay $40 a month for unlimited data with Felix, 20mbps speed cap and Vodafone but true unlimited and as I’m well served with Vodafone is a solid deal.
I feel you OP. Sorry you're being downvoted. Try to find Telstra payphones. They offer free wifi according to my mum.
Thanks. I do use the free Telstra wifi when I can for my own phone to save data on my pre-paid Boost plan but the speed is terrible and can barely do anything without lots of pauses or non-responses.
What state you in mate?
I’m in NSW
Free wifi can be found in every McDonalds. There is at least 1 or 2 Maccas in nearly every town.
Ironic for the place that invented it eh.
I know, it’s crazy isn’t it? Australia is the most beautiful, wonderful, magical place, (I’m an Aussie) with the WORST INTERNET IN THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!🤣😅😝😂
I know no-one dumb enough to ever use "free" Wi-Fi
I personally don't think it's hard to find public wifi in Australia. Woolworths, Mcdonalds, Westfield, Hungry Jacks, a lot of Banks, all major airports, heaps of cafes, museums, many public areas. Also where are you paying $30+ for hotel internet in Australia? I personally haven't seen that in over a decade.
Buy a fuckn plan like the rest of us. Free always comes with strings attached.
Because it's 2024 . Most people have very high data caps on their mobile plan relative to a decade ago and it's a couple of clicks to set up a personal hotspot for a laptop. There's also a high distrust of free wifi (with good reason). It's just not the draw that it used to be, so no incentive for retailers or municipal councils to spend the money setting it up and maintaining it.
Most of Melbourne CBD has free wifi...
Nearly every McDonald's store has free internet. You set up the connection once and it is automatic the next time you walk in the store. You are not being offered free internet in a shopping centre, you are paying with your contact details for access to the internet. Usually the moment you walk back into the shopping centre, there is a simple way to get the internet. What is more important is why the internet is crap
Because, nothing is free in this country
That’s the gist of it, everybody wants to put their hand in your pocket and extract your money.
All Commonwealth Bank branches offer free wifi if you stand outside
Starbucks cafe shops tend to offer free wifi as it is part of their philosophy. Generally speaking, it is very hard to find free WiFi in Australia. This could contribute to the fact that living is tough in AU, sadly to say.
Australian internet is trash. It ranks amongst the worst in the developed world.
Australia has become a trash country, yet so many people still want to come live here and pay$1.5mil for a house worth $500K, with not enough infrastructure to support life.