About
Some Info…
Fremantle is a unique coastal city with a unique atmosphere. Love Freo is trying to capture and document that.
Our new look blog has been delayed, sigh, we’ve just been really busy lately and perfection is what we’re striving for.
Thanks for all the positive comments that we’ve got recently it’s really nice to know that we’re doing something that people enjoy so keep on letting us know what you think info@lovefreo.com.
About Us
We all work full time and Love Freo is something we do in our spare time. We just write about stuff that we think is cool in and around Freo just because :)
Love Freo is…
Izzy works as a graphic designer here in Fremantle. She’s mad about photography, her fiancé, Coaly the dog, their Freo Cottage and long walks on the beach. In the Summer her back-yard deck is known for it’s hospitality and in the winter months she throws great fondue parties. 2009 was a very a good year for Izzy… she was awarded for her efforts in design and photography by winning Designer of the Year 2009 and Corbis Professionals Behind the Lens respectively.
Orla is a web designer that divides her time between North and South Fremantle. She also likes (in no particular order) robots, Edward Gorey, cooking, anthropomorphism, the snooze button, surf, snow, fireworks, her friends, Emma Hill for Mulberry, lip-balm, Polaroids, Monsters, Heston Blumenthal, tea lots of tea… all blends… with or without milk… coffee is so last year, Saul Bass, limes, black holes, new things, old things, Sir John Tenniel, cheese mmm cheese, and The Brunette.
Phil is happiest when he’s: on a boat, eating good food, relaxing in Fremantle, concocting madcap schemes with a view to world domination, hanging out with The Biscuit Lady and playing with Elroy the canine house-beast.
Love Literature
An hour later, the ship had approached within a mile of the pier at Fremantle. The surrounding sea and land were very strange and beautiful. The green shoal-water, the soft air, with a yellowish warmth, the pure white sand of the beach, and the dark green of the unbroken forest beyond, made a scene almost like fairyland.
Moondyne by John Boyle O’Reilly
Legal Stuff
All images, graphics and derivative works, unless otherwise stated, are owned and copyrighted by Love Freo they cannot be reproduced or used in any printed or digital material without prior permission. We will find you and kick your asses.
Hi Phil
We talked at the bar this evening before your presentation. I meant to catch you after it, but had to leave not long after.
Your site had been on my desktop for some time but I now comprehend more clearly what you’re about, thanks to your interesting presentation.
You are along the lines of something I proposed for Fremantle in one of my items in the Fremantle Herald a few years ago, to a resounding thud.
To save a long explanation I’ll paste in the story I wrote, below and you’ll see what I mean – I hope.
Good luck – keep up the great work.
COLIN
Colin Nichol
c.nichol@bigpond.net.au
WHY NOT FREE WIFI FOR FREO?
Colin Nichol picks his way across the media superhighway while dodging convergence and tripping over terminology
FREE broadband internet access for Fremantle? “How?,” would be the first reaction. In today’s world, it seems almost anything is possible. It is happening elsewhere and we are in danger of being left behind in this exciting, innovative development. But there are two major elements involved: cable internet access and wireless and these need to be explained. Then there is the Community Wireless Network (CWN) phenomenon. Additionally, there is an “alphabet soup” of acronyms and a good deal of technical jargon getting the the way of a clear understanding of current delivery systems.
Anything free usually comes with a catch – is it really possible? So far only questions, so let’s look for answers. The trigger for this question was NSW Premier Morris Iemma’s announcement of 29 November last, “.. to provide free universal broadband access to seven major central business districts”. Early next year that government will seek contractors to set up free Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity also known as the computing standard classification 802.11), in Sydney and six major suburbs and cities to “build, own and maintain their own wireless broadband network,” and make “.. free wireless internet a reality in the next three years,” and that the network “will have extensive indoor and outdoor coverage.” Free access perhaps and cable-free, but customers would still pay an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to use this “unplugged” service.
“The government envisages it may be able to provide access to government buildings, water tanks and towers, parking ramps, street and traffic lights etc, to assist the provider to set up the required infrastructure,” said Iemma’s statement. “The government sees itself as a facilitator between local, state government and the provider.” Governments in North America and Europe were currently examining various models to provide wireless infrastructure. Similar initiatives were under way in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Paris and in the UK. The statement adds that competition in the wireless broadband market was entering fever pitch, with large telcos launching upgraded services every few months based on WiMAX or (2002 vintage!) 3G. (You had to ask: “systems delivering ‘last mile’ broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL”).
Then within the same 24 hours, as if in coordination, Queensland commenced a search for partners to build a broadband network in Brisbane (free wireless internet had already been trialled in their Queen Street Mall in 2002) and Western Australia’s Premier Alan Carpenter had announced “homes, businesses, schools and all Government departments will be connected to high-speed broadband under a plan for a State-wide network”. The government said it would not wait any longer for the federal government to develop a national system. Adelaide had already announced early August it was planning to roll out “Australia’s largest metropolitan network of free wireless internet hotspots,” while the Tasmanian government is spending $10 million on TasCOLT, a test trial of optical fibre for broadband, partly funded by the Federal Government.
Premier Carpenter said Western Australians deserved reliable, high-speed and affordable broadband access, no matter where they lived. Currently, many have broadband access of up to 512 kilobits per second, well below most other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries and the government strategy aims to increase this significantly, with speeds of 10 megabits per second likely to become available in the initial stages. Access to this proposed 7,500 plus kilometre fibre-optic cable network linking government services would be made available to private ISPs (Internet Service Providers) which would, in turn, offer wireless and cable access to their clients. But plainly not free.
The State Government currently spends $100 million on telecommunications each year. Under the strategy, this money will be pooled together and offered as a 10-year, $1 billion contract to facilitate the installation of the State-wide broadband network by the private sector. A competitive tender process for the contract will be undertaken early next year and the successful tenderer will be required to build a network that will provide access to all Western Australians and industry – and charge for it.
Science and Innovation Minister and MLA for Cockburn Francis Logan, said the strategy provided an incredible opportunity for the private sector. It was based largely on the telecommunications model successfully implemented in Alberta, Canada (the Alberta SuperNet). “The Alberta State Government has demonstrated that it is possible for a provincial government to facilitate the creation of market conditions which result in a more competitive broadband sector that delivers faster speeds, lower prices and increased penetration of services,” he said. In other words, a broadband cable “roll out” competitive with established telcos.
Canada and America are not the only places developing similar initiatives. The phenomenon is world-wide and provincial or state governments are not the only authorities capable of carrying it out. Plans have been unveiled in the United Kingdom for citywide Wi-Fi networks that will initially give residents in nine cities, including parts of London, high-speed wireless internet access from portable laptops / notebooks, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), games consoles, digital cameras, mobile phones and even for DVD players, televisions and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).
The networks are being built by a European wireless provider company The Cloud. They will be open to any ISP that wants to offer services. Blanket wireless coverage will be provided in the cities through equipment fitted to lamp-posts and street signs. A commercial operation, users will pay one of the ISPs for access, and revenues will be split between them, the wireless provider instigating the project and notably, the local council. Then there is the UK company Opal Telecom, setting up a free broadband service for about two million consumers. Also, pay TV operator BSkyB is preparing to offer existing customers free satellite broadband.
Free wireless broadband access to the internet, where applicable constrained by a quota, is already widely available here and around the world. It is provided at universities (locally at Notre Dame) schools, cafes, travel agencies (in Fremantle too), airports, hospitals, caravan parks, tourist locations, restaurants, libraries, businesses, shopping centres, hotels, vacation premises; there are plenty of small and larger-scale models. Singapore’s Changi Airport has a much-applauded Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) service. Next year that government will launch free wireless internet for all public areas. A petition is circulating the UK calling for free wireless access nationally.
Then there are the Community Wireless Networks. The rural UK town of Wennington in Lancashire is held up as just one example of setting up a self-help small-scale CWN broadband service in what had previously been a communications “notspot” and Community wireless is an enormously developing phenomenon across North and South America, in Europe and elsewhere. We have three community wireless networks in WA and many across the country. Matters are at a stage in America where the Federal Communications Commission is taking action against some community Wi-Fiers. Some are legal, some dubious, taking advantage of unlicensed, unused spectrum. Earlier, pop radio “pirates” – now the broadband? American CWNs offer low cost, super high speed Wi-Fi access at a fraction of the cost charged by media giants. The biggest handicap for them is that “last mile”- the high cost of installing cables.
“There are no regulatory impediments to giving more Australians access to ADSL 2+ (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line – for use over existing copper telephone wires) and Telstra cannot continue to falsely claim Government regulation stands in the way,” Communications Minister Senator Helen Coonan claimed in Adelaide on 7 December last as she launched a Broadband Blueprint to provide a national framework for the future of broadband in Australia. She called on Telstra Chief Executive Officer Sol Trujillo to take immediate action to increase the spread of fast broadband to more Australians. Trujillo and media moguls Rupert Murdoch and James Packer have complained recently that Australia is being left behind because of disgraceful internet speeds. Telstra has claimed that it can’t do any more to improve the system under the current regulatory regime. But Senator Helen Coonan says these attacks were over the top. “It’s up to Telstra to turn up the rest of its exchanges. It’s already got ADSL2+, in my understanding, in hundreds of exchanges that it can make available today with the flick of a switch. I urge them to do so.” Our own state government and others, aren’t waiting.
Now comes the latest development: The Prime Minister and the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts announced the Australian Broadband Guarantee on 7 March 2007. From April 2007, the Australian Broadband Guarantee will replace the Metropolitan Broadband Connect program and the Broadband Connect Incentive program.
The Australian Government’s Metro Broadband Connect is a three-year $50 million initiative to improve access to broadband services in metropolitan Australia. The program will target people unable to access broadband services at prices similar to those available to the majority of metropolitan customers. Metro Broadband Connect is part of the Government’s $1.1 billion Connect Australia package.
ADSL2+ is a hot topic because it is capable of doubling the transmission speed of typical ADSL connections from 1.1 MHz (Megahertz) to 2.2 MHz. This doubles downstream data rates to over 20 Mbps (megabytes per second), but these data speed rates will only be attainable on loops (distance from exchange) shorter than 2.4 kilometres. On the horizon is 4G (Fourth Generation), overtaking 3G with claims of faster wireless transmission up to 1 Gigabyte (one billion bytes) per second. Presumably all concerned are keeping an eye on another development in Tasmania – BPL. This Broadband over Power Line system with claimed high-delivery potential, has been commercially trialled using existing electricity supply cables.
Joshua Gans, author of “Information Paper 86: The Local Broadband Imperative”, a report of 5 December for the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), acknowledged Australia was a broadband “laggard” compared with other developed countries, but said he was not convinced this was “some sort of economic disaster”. Professor Gans said spending on broadband infrastructure should be treated by (local) governments as an investment in “social capital”.
Professor Gans found the major impediment to improving broadband speeds were the “bottlenecks” at Telstra’s telephone exchanges. The most effective method of providing connections for these exchanges, he said, was “highly location-specific” and not suited to a national broadband plan based on a single technology. “The case for a national broadband plan and roll-out is fundamentally flawed,” Professor Gans wrote. “The investments we need in broadband now are more at the local level … so the economic characteristics of that are more akin to providing a garbage service than it is to national defence.”
Professor Gans said the involvement of local councils in securing affordable broadband upgrades could even have a positive effect on property values in the surrounding area. He also advocated a strengthening of telecommunications regulations to force Telstra to open up its telephone exchanges to all interested companies – including to individuals who would only want to provide broadband to a single neighbourhood. Surely the arguments point to local broadband, to micro in addition to macro solutions, a plan for local areas as well as for the state and the whole country. Very local networks will have to be set up.
This is what the Massachusetts-based Common Cause organisation has to say about the American situation today: “Broadband is a Public Service. High-speed internet access is fast becoming a basic public necessity. But far too many people are finding themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide, unable to get connected or afford expensive commercial service. Community Internet is the answer. Soon all media – TV, telephone, radio and the Web – will be delivered via the Internet over a broadband connection. New wireless and wired technologies allow local governments, public-private partnerships, schools and community groups to offer faster, cheaper and more reliable internet service. Hundreds of Community Internet and municipal broadband projects have sprouted up across the America. This new technology is making it possible for cities and towns to improve access to information, provide education and job training, enhance public safety, foster technological innovation, and bolster local economic development.
“The major barrier to establishing Community Internet is not technological or economic. It’s political. Communities throughout the country are finding that they can provide more efficient, affordable and accessible broadband internet service than the telecom giants currently dominating their markets. Community Wireless uses unlicensed space on the public airwaves to provide dependable high-speed internet connections to homes all across America without the high cost and hassle of traditional phone and cable wires. This technology has the potential to revolutionize how we create, distribute and access information. Municipalities throughout the country are setting up broadband services in their communities in the same way they provide electricity, gas and water”.
If ever there were a clearly defined, highly identifiable community that lends itself to this concept, it is Fremantle. Why not a free wireless broadband connection, sponsored by the Fremantle City Council, the Chamber of Commerce and Fremantle First? What an exciting 21st Century way of creating a unified image for the city, of gathering all businesses, the council, community organisations, tourism, institutions and homes, into a common network. Community internet is being referred to as “the re-birth of the internet”. A (legal) version of it, linked eventually to the proposed state government cables, is not only possible but could start operating immediately.
Such a facility would project a strong message about the special, integrated way Fremantle people feel about themselves, their way of life and special identity. Participants could set up their online presence from a work or home computer. There would not only be cost-savings but a one-stop reference point for all things Fremantle could be created. Tourism would be further benefited, goods and services quickly referenced. Entertainment in and around the city would, for the first time, be listed in one location. Small businesses, from one-man contractors and home-based artists, writers, art and craft producers, performers and so on could have the opportunity of being found alongside major companies and accessible state-wide, nationally – and internationally.
The internet as a major reference comparable with newspapers, television and radio has been some time in coming. It has now arrived and is surging ahead around the world. Now is the time of innovation and the possibilities, while enormous at present, are still only beginning to be grasped. Those who get in earliest will benefit the most: that has always been the w.w.w. message. Be first or be worst. Using the internet is this way is not only the future, it is now, its time is here.
That CEDA report states: “.. telcos have been overestimating the importance of broadband to the national economy and should abandon plans for a national infrastructure upgrade” and “responsibility for broadband upgrades should be delegated to local councils, which could run tenders for interested companies”. That and all the foregoing feeds into the concept of localised and hopefully free, community access to a wireless internet service focussed on its finite area.
Free broadband – how? – began this story. The “how” is – by eventually connecting local wireless and wire to the promised government cables. It will be more competitive and could be a free link if our public authorities decide to provide the infrastructure. The free part is only partly free – users would have to pay a provider, but the dividends for Fremantle and its operations in every sphere can only be imagined from the viewpoint of this quite early stage in the development of the technology. The internet is, after all, still a quite young science. Even the best imaginations are wondering where the technology will lead. Community or LAN (Local Area Network) of some kind will happen here, it is spreading across the world. And broadband is already out of this world – NASA’s twin Mars exploration rovers are maintaining a 256Kbps uplink to orbiting satellites. If it can be done for Mars, we can do it here. There is only a booby prize for being last. Make it a first for Fremantle.
Originally written 13 December 2006
Colin Nichol
August 11, 2011 at 9:47 pm