Adelaide company Internode has been selected to build Adelaide’s free city-wide wifi network.

About 97 per cent of the city’s north will be covered. However, despite Council’s claim the entire CBD will be covered, large areas of the city between Victoria Square and South Terrace will not have access to the wifi service (see coverage map below).

More than 200 new wireless access points will be added under the system. Internode already operates a series of free wireless hotspots throughout the city, and says it will upgrade that network to match the new service.

The project will cost about $1.5 million, with two-thirds of the cost being born by the State Government and Adelaide City Council chipping in the other $500,000.

The funding will cover the initial set-up costs of the network. Internode will then be expected to generate revenue from the service to pay for its upkeep.

While final details of the network are yet to be worked out, Internode’s Simon Hackett told InDaily he expected the network would have some usage caps for users. Commercial organisations and city residents were likely to be offered the option of signing up to a plan, which would increase the usage cap.

“The aim is, you’ll get a decent free allocation regardless of who you are,” Hackett said this morning.

“And then if you want to use it in a more heavy-duty way, if you’re one of customers, it can be a shared part of your quota at home.

“There’s going to be some controls there, so that you can’t just sit there and use it to download the whole internet. It’s intended to be for the sort of uses you’d imagine that a roaming user is going to use it for – checking into Facebook, reading some email, uploading and downloading a few little things.”

Work has already started on the project which is expected to be completed by March next year.

Adelaide Wifi Coverage Map