TELSTRA have announced a cunning plan to grow their home broadband business.

They’ve announced a trial for a few months of free public wifi using the infrastructure of their payphones.

Civic here in Canberra will have some of these hotspots available.

Once the network moves out of trial mode early next year you’ll need to be a Telstra customer to use the network.

There’s more information on the Telstra website.

Of some interest is their plan to get home users to make their wifi network available to Telstra customers in the area.

One hopes that any terrorists or child abusers using your home connection for their nefarious deeds can be filtered out in the meta-data.

Telstra have happily provided a concept drawing which looks much like people using existing mobile data. A future seen through the Black Mirror.