Several Kings Meadows community groups and their members are set to benefit from an extension to the city’s free public WIFI system.
The Shed – formerly known as the Men’s Shed, the Kings Meadows Bowls Club and the local scout brigade, as well as a large portion of the public car park at end of Nunamina Avenue, will now be covered by the City of Launceston’s public WIFI.
City of Launceston Mayor Albert van Zetten said that the WIFI installation at Kings Meadows came as a result of the ABCDE Learning site work.
“Through that program, we identified that two community groups could benefit from such an initiative, as well as coverage through the car park and playground area,” Mayor van Zetten said.
“The rollout itself wasn’t over difficult to do given Council could leverage off the Carr Villa Memorial site, which already has an NBN connection.
“Given the Kings Meadows Learning Site program finished several months ago, this latest project shows that the work we do with those local communities doesn’t just stop when we move on. It’s an ongoing program to work with our communities at a grass roots level to help improve their lives.
“What we enjoy most about the Learning Site program is that it has consistently unearthed passionate people from across a range of suburbs across Launceston who care about their communities, who want to make a difference, and who are willing to put in time and effort to collaborate with others to achieve that goal.”
Mayor van Zetten said The Shed members are looking to use the public WIFI system to help get their public tool library online, while the local scout group has also indicated that it will be particularly useful for their online tutorials and initiatives such as how-to videos.
The ongoing cost of the service at Kings Meadows is minimal, and is expected to be less than $500 a year, Mayor van Zetten said.
The network name is Launceston WIFI – the same as the CBD and Northern Suburbs. Download speeds are limited to 10Mbps per user with a 2GB download limit per day.
The coverage area is approximately 100 metres in each direction around the scout hall.
There is a map available on the Council website that shows the areas of coverage for the entire free public WIFI system:
The Kings Meadows roll-out is the first City of Launceston public WIFI deployment in the south of the city after successful installations in Invermay, Mayfield, Rocherlea, Ravenswood, Waverley and Mowbray.
The Council has also installed WIFI access points at Churchill Park at the soccer grounds, as well as at Rocherlea Football Club – both of which have proven to be very successful, particularly at Churchill Park during junior soccer season.
Mayor van Zetten said the Council’s free public WIFI network has continued to grow since its initial roll-out in 2014.
More than 50 WIFI points have been deployed, with more than 85 per cent of the CBD now covered.
The Kings Meadows chapter of the ABCDE Learning Site initiative finished in late July this year with a community celebration attended by more than 100 local residents.
Projects sparked by the Kings Meadows Learning Site included a mural at Kings Meadows High School, a short film called The Hidden Gems of Kings, new signage to encourage care for local waterways, the It’s About Time photographic exhibition at The Manor, the development of the Launceston Tool Library, and historical research by Tony McCormack.
The Learning Site program works with a new Launceston suburb each year to facilitate community driven projects utilising each suburb’s greatest resource — its people. In recent years the program has been hosted at Rocherlea, Ravenswood, Mowbray, Youngtown and — most recently — Kings Meadows.
The current suburb hosting the ABCDE program is Invermay.
