Tomizone offers pay-by-credit card access to 2000 Chinese hotspots

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 18 March 2009 08:40

IT Industry - Market

New Zealand based Tomizone has struck deals with two of China's largest carriers to enable it to offer pay-as-you-go access to a network of 2000 WiFi hotspots in China, expected to grow to 10,000 by the end of 2009.

The hotspots are located at major airports, popular hotels and other key venues and will enable foreign visitors (and Chinese credit card holders) to gain Internet access for $US10 per hour. Tomizone has partnered with local company Coordinate Technologies to set up and operate the service.

Tomizone founder and CEO Steve Simms, told iTWire that China Mobile and China Unicom planned to increase the number of hotspots to 10,000 by the end of the year "primarily in tier one locations such as airports and major hotels." He conceded that the price of access was higher than that Tomizone charges for access to its Australian and New Zealand hotspots, but said this was largely governed by China Telecom.

At present users can buy access for a maximum of three hours, which expires three hours after sign on, but Simms said he was looking at other pricing possibilities.

Coordinate Technologies is a specialist system integrator that facilitates bilateral international roaming with Chinese wireless broadband networks, enabling subscribers of international operators and aggregators like iPass and Boingo to access Chinese WiFi hotspots.

Tomizone's main modus operandi to date has been to enable individuals with a broadband connection and a WiFi access point to offer access to the Internet to others for a fee (shared 50/50 with Tomizone). This service is enabled via software embedded in certain D-Link WiFi access point broadband routers (available in retail stores in Australia). It claims to be the largest hotspot operator in Australia with some 6000 installed.