KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 20 – Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng in the statement here on Monday that he will be launching the 50 high speed WiFi hotspots on Wednesday. He said Penang has given its 6-year old free WiFi service with a boost by increasing the speed to 3Mbps at 50 hotspots in the Heritage and KOMTAR vicinities.
“Users at these selected areas will now be able to enjoy a better and faster service which is free and at the same time, their web browsing experience will be enhanced. With many owning smartphones, tablets and laptops, the faster 3Mbps speed will mean users can now do much more including downloading videos, movies and songs,” said Lim.
“The normal speed for other free WiFi hotspots in the island and Butterworth is up to 1Mbps. While I also will be launch the 50 high speed WiFi hotspots on Wednesday (October 21, 2015) in Penang, which will be easily identified by a High Speed Penang Free WiFi logo,” he said.
The roll out of the 50 high speed hotspots is the latest in the state government’s on-going efforts to make the free WiFi service as good and as convenient as possible for Penangites and visitors. The upgrade came at the heels of a bandwidth increase from 75Mbps to 375Mbps in February this year enabling Internet users to enjoy a faster speed of up to 1Mbps compared to 512kbps previously.
Launched in 2009 by the state government, the Penang Free WiFi service continues to be very popular amongst residents and tourists. Meanwhile, there are about 600,000 registered users with an average 20,000 users logging into the service daily. The free WiFi service is available at 1,560 hotspots located in all the state’s 40 constituencies.
Todate, Penang remains the only state in the country to provide such a large scale 24/7 free Internet access at public places. To register as a user of the Penang Free WiFi service, search and connect to the Penang Free WiFi SSID and complete the necessary particulars as prompted.
