Cafenet News

Vic plans WiFi trial at Kelburn

26 April 2004

INFTOTECH: Victoria University is planning to trial WiFi at its Kelburn campus this year, giving students and staff with notebooks and PDAs access to wireless broadband Internet services.

Victoria's newly-appointed director of information technology services, Alan Dempster, says the university is likely to set up its own WiFi service.

This contrasts with the approach taken by Massey University.

Massey recently struck a deal with public WiFi service provider CityLink under which the Wellington telco has installed five WiFi hotspots at Massey's Te Aro campus, giving students and other computer users access to CityLink's commercial CafeNet service.

Mr Dempster, who is chairman of CityLink, says the advantage of Victoria providing WiFi using the university's own infrastructure is that users can be given greater access to the university's IT applications.

This is because the university would be in control of network security, rather than being in the position of granting access to computer users coming in over a public network.

It would also mean students could be billed by Victoria or that the university could absorb WiFi user charges for staff.