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Posted by memigo at 1am on 27.06.03

didja see this?

David Fick­ling in Sydney
Friday June 27, 2003
The Guardian

Until a few years ago, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions on the Pacific island of Niue con­sisted of a few hand-​cranked tele­phones. But this week the tiny coun­try is launch­ing the world’s most sophis­ti­cated national inter­net service.

The 100 square mile lump of coral 1,500 miles north-​east of New Zealand is to become the first coun­try in the world to have a nation­wide wire­less inter­net system. Locals with a laptop and an aerial will be able to surf the net at home, on the beach, in a restau­rant, or from a boat.

Wire­less inter­net has been the holy grail of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions for years. Inter­na­tion­ally the system is found, albeit still quite rarely, on Wap and 3G mobile phones.

Niue, how­ever, accord­ing to the island’s inter­net users’ soci­ety, will soon enjoy a free wire­less ser­vice almost as fast as a typ­i­cal broad­band connection.

The soci­ety will hang solar-​powered aeri­als from coconut palms to bring the inter­net to the island’s pop­u­la­tion of 1,700 in the coming months.

“Copper wires cor­rode too quickly and easily get knocked out by light­ning strikes,” said the society’s Richard Saint Clair. “We’re better off doing with­out them altogether.”

Emi­gra­tion has caused a pop­u­la­tion slump on Niue. But where in 1991 there were just 376 tele­phone lines in use, Niueans now send up to 30,000 emails a week and spend 6,000 hours online a month.

The island’s inter­net soci­ety grew under the tute­lage of the Amer­i­can com­put­ing jour­nal­ist William Semich.

The tech­nol­ogy being adopted is iden­ti­cal to the wire­less inter­net avail­able in some offices, hotels and cafes in big cities around the world. The dif­fer­ence on Niue is that the system is free for public use.

Its only poten­tial prob­lem is that it depends on a satel­lite link to sites not based on the island. “If some­one tried to down­load a big doc­u­ment from some­where else, it would prob­a­bly block up the whole network,” said Mr Semich.

Much of the island’s web invest­ment has been made pos­si­ble by sell­ing rights to use its .nu domain name. Tens of thou­sands of com­pa­nies world­wide have paid £18 each to put the suffix after their inter­net addresses.

Posted by Lady Idaho at 4pm on 27.06.03

Yep. I’m moving there shortly.

Posted by Jibo Mibo at 4pm on 27.06.03

Sibo.

Also, and unre­lated: Storm Thor­mond died. I hope there is a spe­cial corner of hell reserved for him to rot in.

Posted by Ibo Lupibo at 9am on 28.06.03

Aye, he is liable to be rot­ting in the hell now. Many an inter­est­ing link on the sub­ject over at MetaFil­ter… You’ll espe­cially enjoy the story of his pro­posal to his wife.

Posted by Jack 'Jibo Mibo' Mottram at 11am on 28.06.03

at last a web­site thats not homo­pho­bic . tell me is the sub­club a safe haven for gay clubbers .

Posted by jack at 9pm on 03.10.03

Hello (other)Jack - yep, I would say the Sub is pretty much gay-​friendly (espe­cially Optimo)

Did you mean to leave this com­ment on the more recent Wifi post?

Posted by Jack at 8pm on 04.10.03

yes i sill trying to get a hang is post­ing on here help ?

Posted by jack at 9pm on 06.10.03

You just have to go to the bottom of the post you’re read­ing and use the com­ment form (or if you’re on the front page of the site, click where it says ‘Comments & Trackbacks’)

Also, since I’m called Jack too, and main­tain the site, it might save some con­fu­sion if you picked a dif­fer­ent name to post as!

Posted by Jack Mottram at 9am on 07.10.03