Wireless Internet Connections at the Snow

Wireless Internet Connections at the Snow

| 28/07/2006

As we embrace ourselves for the snow season what better news to hear besides the extra dumping of snow we have received in the last couple of days then the fact that we can stay connected while we are hitting the slopes.

Yes, you heard it Perisher Blue (www.perisherblue.com.au), Mt Buller (www.mtbuller.com.au), and Falls Creek (www.fallscreek.com.au) are in the midst of providing us with a resort wide wireless internet connection.

Perisher Blue will be trialing an electronic smartcard system this season that will serve as a electronic lift pass and prepaid credit, one quick swipe of your electronic pass and it will fulfill all your purchasing needs on the slopes. The resort is hoping by next year instead of the sticky tradition ski passes we have all grown use to, I’ve kept every one of them … that we will be carrying RFID [radio frequency] chips on our passes. The pass will give us the green light to hop onto the lifts at the bottom and measure how many kilometers traveled in a day, now wouldn’t that be a fun statistics to share with your mates.

Mt Buller also have similar wireless networks in placed resort wide. In additional to being a electronic lift pass the device will also act as a GPS locator, giving skiers and boarders the security they need. The device will mainly be used by ski instructors at first to ensure no learner ever ventures too far out of sight or in the worst case scenario if a person does get lost the GPS device will shorten the rescue time substantially. The resort wide wireless internet connection is provided by Whispar, connection times are sold in the range of 30mins blocks for $5 to seasonal packages of $239. The pricing online doesn’t state any data limit but they do reserve the right to charge upon unreasonable use. At a speed of 256kbps I say the service is great way for me to instantly share my moments at the snow with friends and family.

Falls Creek have developed a interactive trail map that is regularly updated by ski patrol every 15 minutes, using GPRS users can download the interactive trail map to their PDAs. We can now check what lifts are open and potentially in the future receive live instant footage of any of the resort’s six snow cameras. Gone are the days when we have to sit and wonder where on the resort are the best places to be, we now have access to state of the are wireless technology to feed us the instant footages of different areas of the resort.

tags: Technology