Australia's Telstra has activated the first 150 hotspots for its planned national Wi-Fi network, which will be made up mainly from hotspots provided by its broadband customers.
The operator is offering free trial Wi-Fi at busy locations in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
Telstra has set a target of having 1000 hotspots active before Christmas, targeting towns, regional hubs and holiday destinations likely to be highly-trafficked during the holidays.
Access to the network will be free up until it officially launches early next year. Trials will involve deploying Wi-Fi at payphone sites at the center of metro and regional areas.
Once complete, Telstra anticipates that the network will consist of over 2 million hotspots, making it one of the world's largest Wi-Fi networks.
The large majority of these will be provided by Telstra customers' own Wi-Fi routers, in exchange for the customers being able to use their monthly bandwidth allocation at any other Wi-Fi site.
The project has a budget of around A$100 million ($86.3 million) and is expected to take five years.
“This trial marks the beginning of our ambition to switch on more than two million hotspots across the nation over five years and give customers the best Wi-Fi experience in and out of the home,” Telstra Retail group executive Gordon Ballantyne said.