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Wireless Networking Hardware

Niue Gets Island-Wide WiFi 245

Posted by timothy from the vatican-city-is-next dept.
NinjaPablo writes "Business Wire is running a story about the polynesian island of Niue. Niue has just completed an island-wide wifi network, making it the first country with nationwide free wifi access. This comes after countrywide email was started in 1997, dialup access in 1999, and broadband this Spring, all free for anyone."
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Niue Gets Island-Wide WiFi More

Niue Gets Island-Wide WiFi

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  • Hm.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Suicide ( 45320 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:27AM (#6281904) Homepage
    Island... beach... free internet...

    Where do I sign up?

    • Re:Hm.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by gilesroberts ( 682824 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:11AM (#6282095)
      These Niueans are obviously more cunning than we give them credit for. How on earth did they manage to get e-mail before dial up access?

    • Re:Hm.... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zerocool^ ( 112121 )
      My girlfriend wants to study Iguanas. She's got a degree in animal science, focus on neurochemistry or something, and wants to go to grad school to study reptiles.

      She wants to move to airazona or something. I keep telling her to check out and see what schools have satelite programs in the polynesian isles.

      Now, I'll have to push a little more steadily.

    • Head in the direction of your nearest Ocean. When you get a few miles out, make a sharp right. You can't miss it!

    • Re:Hm.... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Loki_1929 ( 550940 ) * on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @04:01AM (#6282265) Journal
      "Island... beach... free internet...
      Where do I sign up?"

      Are you kidding me? I'd sell my soul to the Devil for what these people have.

      "Up your's, God... I'm already in Heaven!"

    • Why don't you try island... ice... polar bears... But much greater bandwidth! :-)

      The Svalbard archipelago [svalbard.com] gets two real fiber optic cables [www.cnw.ca] 3000 kms from the Norwegian mainland. It is mainly going to be used by the Norwegian Space Centre to transfer satellite data to their customers, but in fact, every house will be connected to the backbone with a VDSL line.

      Come to think about it, it shouldn't be that far along the great circle to put a fibre optic cable under the north pole when you're that close to i

    • Re:Hm.... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Zaxor ( 603485 )
      The CIA World Factbook [cia.gov] lists the former name as "Savage Island," so maybe you'd better think twice!

  • New advertising slogan (Score:5, Funny)

    by Koushiro ( 612241 ) <koushballNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:27AM (#6281907) Homepage
    "Niue - Wardriving Made Easy"

  • Small island nations shouldn't count for firsts. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:28AM (#6281915)
    But come on now, that doesn't even count! 2000 people? The UC Berkeley system is ten times that, and they're even thinking of installing campus-wide wifi.

  • The reason why... (Score:5, Informative)

    by sbszine ( 633428 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:31AM (#6281931) Journal
    There's a good snippet from the article which explains why they went for wireless over wired:

    WiFi is the perfect fit for the Island of Niue, where harsh weather conditions of rain, lightning, salt water, and high humidity cause major problems with underground copper lines

    It later goes on to talk about 'cyclone season', so I guess you could safely add wind to that list. Watch the pringles cans fly off into the stratosphere!

  • Spam haven? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cly ( 457948 ) <`myspampot' `at' `yahoo.com'> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:34AM (#6281941)
    Spammers can make use of the unrestricted wifi to spam to their hearts delight.

    Would the place become a base for spam corporations?
    • Ok, so filter out SMTP, except to the island email server (throttled of course). Spammers would be banned from internet access anywhere in the country. Ouch.

    • Re:Spam haven? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Imperator ( 17614 ) <slashdot2.omershenker@net> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:16AM (#6282116)
      RTFA, and give me some of whatever you're smoking

      The island has less than 2000 residents. That means 1 degree of separation at most, I'd guess. If you're not one of them, you kinda stick out.

      Besides, wifi has terrible bandwidth. Why fly all the way there to get what you can get at many unis for free? Hell, there are unis where you can just walk into the library, plug in your laptop, and use the school's massive bandwidth.

      As cheesy a plot as flying to Niue to spam from a secret cave hideout might be, it's an idea that 10 seconds of thought would reject.
      • Besides, wifi has terrible bandwidth.

        So? How much bandwidth do you think you need to fire off a thousand e-mails? Let's see, the average spam e-mail weighs in at less than 1k, 802.11b has a throughput of about 12Mbps, that's umm... carry the 3... about 1 second.

        There's a reason stolen AOL accounts are so commonly used to send spam. It doesn't take a great deal of bandwidth to get a hell of a lot of messages out there. That's also why so much spam exists in the first place.

      • As cheesy a plot as flying to Niue to spam from a secret cave hideout might be, it's an idea that 10 seconds of thought would reject.


        Agreed - but that doesn't mean Hollywood won't do it anyway :-)

  • I guess that settles the Condo vs. Yacht question!

  • Anybody notice this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jeffiel ( 304392 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:36AM (#6281949)
    Did it strike anybody as strange that they gave nationwide email to a country two years *before* they gave dialup?

    What good is email if you can't access the internet?
    • You get to still say you have nationwide email.

    • Re:Anybody notice this? (Score:5, Informative)

      by qorkfiend ( 550713 ) <qorkfiend@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:42AM (#6281989)
      They could access the internet, they just didn't get it for free. They DO have a telephone system.
      • They could access the internet, they just didn't get it for free.

        TANSTAAFL. It does have to be paid for, in this case the money comes from sales of .nu domains. Which is much better than just dropping the cost on the taxpayer and calling it "free", but the point is, the money has to come from somewhere.
      • They DO have a telephone system.

        Yep! And the telephone for it should be delivered any day now!

        -
    • Although email is a _part_ of the internet, it still serves a use in and of itself. If they were unable to provide full internet at the time, e-mail was still a worthwhile service to provide.

      Troll.
    • Seeing as its such a small community, I would be guessing that communal internet access would have been the first step, followed two years later with dialup for all.

      With just 2000 people on the island, you'd think that it wouldn't be too hard to get a little time on the computers at the library or community centre, for instance, to check your email. So no it didn't strike me as strange, just that with a small community and relatively small location, communal access would be both cheap and effective.

  • Taxes, or tourism? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KingArthur10 ( 679328 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `dragob.ruhtra'> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:36AM (#6281953)
    With the limited range of WiFi, they'd need a station in every house, and the financial burden of an undertaking like that would be immense. I'd imagine that, since they have broadband, they can cut some pretty cheap bulk deals around maybe $50 per station, but the costs would still be astronomical, and from the looks of the article, they are saying that there is a blanket of WiFi over the ENTIRE island. Essentially, everywhere you see a transformer on a telephone, you'd have to see a base station, but really, the interference from such electricity would cause problems, so they probably alternate. I am guessing that other than by taxes, the biggest way they are paying for all of this is from tourism, which apparently is large for such a small island. I'm betting that within two years, they'd be able to pay off the addition, and after that, it would merely be a matter of the funds to maintain the system, which will also get costly.
  • Oh man. Picture the reception the Pope could get if he lined his hat with antennae.

    • Bwahahahahahaha (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You are some kind of maniacal funnyman! How can you spread your funny-throw-down quips around here without getting spammed to death by pure fun-laugh responses? Wow. I have to wake up my girlfriend and let her know at 2 am central time that there is some kind of mad comedic genius at work on Slashdot. Anything Pope is just brilliant. Pope AND hat AND the hat is large? Well, let me say friend that you have given all of us a good squirt in the face of hilarious joy. Mods, please mod this up +5 Sidesplitter! F
    • Yeah, I'm sure the network in Vatican City would be 100% pr0n free...

  • Waryachting (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zayin ( 91850 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:42AM (#6281982)

    Yachts with onboard computer equipment with WiFi cards and external antennas will be able to park in the harbor and access full Internet services from their vessels as an open node, also free of charge.

    Cool! Now all I need to do is buy a yacht and I will have _free internet access_! Saving $50 per month in broadband fees, I'll have a ROI on the yacht within 83 years. ($50000 yacht)

    A substantial portion of Niue's tourism comes from visiting yacht traffic during the non-cyclone season.

    So you mean there's a cyclone season as well? Damn..

  • What's next? (Score:2, Funny)

    by neglige ( 641101 )
    So, free UMTS for everyone by the end of this year or next summer?

    And how about free beer (or cocktails at the beach)?

  • Please be kind. (Score:5, Informative)

    by gantrep ( 627089 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:46AM (#6282009)
    www.niue.nu is very very slow. Please stay away.

    Here's their history page:

    Savage Island Network History Niue (pronounced 'new-way') is a small Island in the South Pacific located at around 169 West by 19 South, and is so very isolated, the problem of Internet services has been a difficult one to say the very least. All overseas connections are expensive, bandwidth is very limited (and again, expensive).

    Local communication until a few years ago involved small phones with cranks on the side in most villages. Telecom Niue eventually upgraded those connections and local switching services improved as well. This made it possible to consider electronic communications as a possibility and it didn't take long to create local interest in where that could go.

    Development of the first version of the Savage Island Network began around January of 1995. At that time, the original system ran as a standard BBS (RABBS) running under Digital Research DOS, and was configured as a local only (intranet)email, file server and BBS service. Dubbed the Savage Island Network after the original name given to the Island of Niue by Captain Cook, that system ran 24 hours a day 7 days a week and provided the first electronic communications of it's kind on Niue, primarily to the government of Niue's internal administrative infrastructure and a handful of users interested in data communications.

    With only twenty to thirty users, the privately owned Savage Island Network was the beginning of telecommunications development on Niue and served as a training tool and learning environment for the local users as well as those who assumed the challenge of things to come and the need to be familiar with new technologies. Interestingly enough, that system logged an enourmous number of calls with what by Niue standards was a very high level of communication traffic. The need was there-potential seen.

    That system was replaced with a 32 bit version of the WildCat BBS system, and the users found themselves fast into the world of HTML and other "new look and feel" interfaces. Still it was a local only BBS running file services, ftp, news groups email and in general, being used as a teaching tool for the fifty or so users on-line. Government departments could exchange data electronically without printing it, or traveling to other departments on the Island. Value was beginning to show, traffic was on the increase and the user base was building.

    Enter Internet User's Society........

    About the time that my personal resources were starting to feel the sting of the legendary "self funded" hobby, and also during the time when ideas for an affordable world wide connection for our services were running low, the Government of Niue introduced me to the Internet User's Society in Boston Massachusetts. After many discussions with government officials and other interested parties on Niue, it was decided that the project would continue, as a private sector development, and Savage Island Network would join forces with the Internet User's Society to form the Internet Users Society Niue, in order to complete the task of bringing world wide email and Internet services to Niue.

    The fundamental plan was to set up the ccTLD .nu domain to be sold as domain registrations on the open global market. The resources generated by those sales would then be used to develop and maintain the Internet services on Niue. After a few set backs and a lot of hard work, we brought the email-only services on-line and opened to the Niuean public in March of 1997 after some weeks of testing.

    Now after some years of on-line time with world wide email services we are finally seeing the Internet as a standard communications utility. With full Internet services to Niue, and progress and development of world wide communications services, the IT development on Niue can continue as planned. Our systems continue to improve, and the services have been opened up to all permanent Niuean residents and the gov

  • Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:50AM (#6282019) Homepage
    So we've got wardriving and warflying or whatever, so what do we call this? Warsailing, waryachting, warboating...

  • good to hear (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Plix ( 204304 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:51AM (#6282028) Homepage
    I own several .nu domains myself, and they don't come cheap (to just change your dns server listings - or any other setting - costs $10 [which can be avoided by waiting until it comes time to renew the domain]). I'm just glad to hear that all that money is going to a good cause, unlike many other tlds such as .ws, .tv, etc. which are marketed as entirely american and without any significant benifit to the countries for which they were originally created.
    • As i understand it Tuvalu did reasonably well out of .tv though I'm happy to be shown otherwise. An article today in The Australian talks about .la from Laos but hasn't any details on hoiw well Laos is going to do out of LA. business.
    • I just gave up rtfm.nu because of the price increases. While I'd have liked to support them, the cost of the domain plus instaweb was making netsol look reasonable :-(

  • /.ing a whole nation/island (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gogo Dodo ( 129808 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:59AM (#6282055)
    Is this a first? Has /. taken out an entire nation?
    • The link is to an article at businesswire.com, headquarters at:

      44 Montgomery Street, 39th Floor
      San Francisco, CA 94104

      So, no not directly, but it might still be /.ed in the comments if people link to some sites hosted in Niue
    • Is this a first? Has /. taken out an entire nation?
      Well, dunno about slash, but Once Upon a Time maybe a decade ago somebody at MIT managed to take Portugal off the net. See, MIT and Portugal happened to have about the same size pipe....
      Of course this is based on hearsay from a sysadmin friend; apply NaCl liberally.
    • it's an act of war! and using bush logic... slashdot is in the usa .. the usa is harboring slashdot... ... declare war on usa!

  • Might be useful (Score:5, Funny)

    by qorkfiend ( 550713 ) <qorkfiend@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:02AM (#6282063)
    for ships out at sea for extended periods of time (or just passing by), they can take a quick run to Niue and drop off/pick up their email without having to dock..

  • If there really is free broadband for every one... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GrodinTierce ( 571882 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:06AM (#6282074) Journal
    I'm dying to know the details. From companies perspectives there are enough 'problems' with the flat rate model that many are switching to caps or per GB charges, so would free bandwidth be even 'worse'?

    Basically, what's the speed, and how do they deal with serious users?

    Tierce

  • Nieu News (Score:4, Funny)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:08AM (#6282081) Journal
    Nieu News Knew New Wieu-Fieu.
  • Savage Island Network == S.I.N.

    Hmmm....I wonder what they will do with all that free internet access?

  • Wow ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pacer ( 153176 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:23AM (#6282141) Homepage Journal
    I wish the proceeds from the sale of all .com, .org, and .net domains went to giving US citizens free (and anonymous) net access.

    • Re:Wow ... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by gantrep ( 627089 )
      Domain registration used to be free. I believe there should be a toplevel domain reserved for giving anyone who requests it one free domain name based on their name or any reasonable variation of their name.
    • for a registrar to ask a registry (verisign com/net, affilias/pir org, neuleval biz/name?) to reserve a domain... it costs then $4 on average.

      RCOM and Verisign charge $35. There's a lot of moolah going to the bigger registrars out there. With terrible systems and support, no wonder these companies stay affloat, while godaddy charges about $8 and stays afloat. Hrm...

  • I wonder... (Score:3, Funny)

    by barbazoo ( 604828 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:26AM (#6282151)
    ...if they ever considered using ALOHA [laynetworks.com] instead of WiFi.
  • They've been raking it in for a while by selling .nu domains, often for "adult" material ("nu" means "nude" to some people).

    • Re:.nu TLD (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Troed ( 102527 )
      "nu" means "now" in Swedish - and most .nu domains I've seen are owned by Swedes. .se opened up for free registration just recently - partly to "combat" .nu.

  • pop density/number of access points needed (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    259 square km's... Hmm.... how many Access points would you need? With good antenna's, and perhaps relaxed electronic emmissions requirments (since this is being approved by the government), I figure one AP could cover 3 square km's (as a conservitave guesstimate). so that's less than 100 access points, shared among a population of around 2000... Whats an access point worth? Everyone could throw in $20 I suppose.
    • and perhaps relaxed electronic emmissions requirments (since this is being approved by the government)

      And that's the important thing that some people here are forgetting - they don't have to give a damn about emissions, provided they don't interfere with the next island. The next question is, just how lumpy is Niue, and are the lumps big enough to significantly attenuate the signals?

    • If you really want "island-wide" access, I suppose you'd need quite a few. But most of the population is clustered in the 14 villages, so setting up one point per village would be a good start already. (Tough luck for the farmers out in their fields who want to check the current taro prices, though.)

  • In all seriousness... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Max Threshold ( 540114 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:45AM (#6282211)
    See how much better things work in small societies where everyone feels like a significant part of the whole? This is why we Americans need to lay the smack down on our Federal government and give the power (read "money") back to our state and local governments. If your city council got the lion's share of your tax dollars, you might have free Wi-Fi, too.

    Screw this blood-for-oil bullshit! I want my free Wi-Fi!

  • Maui Sky Fiber (Score:3, Informative)

    by kevlar ( 13509 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @04:17AM (#6282317)
    Maui Sky Fiber in Hawaii has deployed a wireless 3G internet solution. For $14/day you can have broadband from anywhere on the western part of the island. I'm using it right now, and while their setup software needs serious help, the throughput and reliablity of the actual service is great.

  • I was just thinking (Score:5, Funny)

    by qa'lth ( 216840 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @04:28AM (#6282342)
    That if we parked a yacht offshore and started up Kazaa.. it'd be giving a whole new meaning to coastal piracy.
  • In related news:

    The Khumu island is the first island in the history of communications to be fully covered by WiFi, GSM, 3G and Bluetooth at the same time. The coverage exceeds 96% of the total area of the island.
    Both of the inhabitants of the island declare that they are planning to buy GSM phones and WiFi enabled laptops in the near future. Currently they are trying to get supplies of fresh watter, food and looking for someone to take them away from the goddamn island, but to no avail.

  • ...And after global warming... (Score:3, Funny)

    by slashdot_commentator ( 444053 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @06:08AM (#6282577) Journal

    They can be the first to supply transpacific fibre-optic cable internet connections to all the aquatic residents of their submerged kingdom...
  • http://www.niueisland.com/

    I can't just see my self on the beach drinking a fruity beverage and surfing the web.
  • Somebody mentioned above that spammers would be a problem. This would seem to be a problem, not just spammers, but any trouble making hooligans, how do they go about making sure their users play fair on the net and don't end up causing a ruckus by doing foolish harmful things? Should they be concerned at all?

  • The next island (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cackmobile ( 182667 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:15AM (#6282974) Journal
    So when is my island going to get full wifi coverage. I knows its a problem that I live on the biggest one around; Australia. Come on Alston!!

  • EE question (Score:2, Interesting)

    by elliotweston ( 681846 )
    As a non-EE, I can't tell whether this passage is pure bloviation or not:

    Niue has no natural Earth ground, and therefore actually appears to an energy source as a giant capacitor-resistor floating on the ocean floor some thousands of feet down. Add to that the dielectric constant of ocean water, with a fresh water lens floating in coral and it makes Niue a very interesting specimen of electrical properties. Instead of being called one of the largest coral atolls in the world, perhaps it should better be c

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