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In shades of the T-card electronic ticket debacle, Eric Roozendaal, the Minister for Commerce has announced the once-promised free wireless broadband network for the Sydney CBD and other major urban centres would be killed off due to financial concerns.
This he said was because the Government had carefully evaluated proposals from a number of WiFi network providers but found it "wasn't practical" and was in fact "financially unviable" – or in other words, it cost too much and there were no votes in it.
NSW Premier, Morris Iemma, first announced the free broadband idea in late 2006, saying it would boost the NSW economy by making it more attractive to hi-tech businesses, particularly those with mobile workers.
To be fair to Roozendaal, in the US, similar free wireless schemes in cities like Chicago, and San Francisco have been also scrapped after failing commercially. Although at the same time, in other places like Estonia and some Scandinavian countries, free public wireless broadband has been a resounding success.
