So I rock into Nelson, and first thing I do is check for Wireless networks. There's nothing apart from a Telecom Wireless Hotspot.
"Oh fuck" I think, I'm screwed, this is going to cost the earth. But then I connect to the thing, and check out the service homepage which I think is kind of nice. It also lets you browse XtraMSN for free, which I think is even nicer - I can at least pretend I'm connected. But THEN I read the FAQ - the thing is free to Xtra broadband customers until the end of the year, I just logged in using my adsl account and it works.. i'll pay charges if I exceed my 10gb monthly allowance, but other than that, it's free!
So then I ring up Telecom just to check.. it's like "Hi, it says on your website that it's free for Xtra customers... are you for real?" and some bemused Telecom lady tells me "Yep thats right!"
(She then went on to tell me to use the wrong account to connect, even though I'd already worked out which one to use, but that was ok..)
There seems to be a few weird glitches with the "logout" command though. I connected via my colleagues laptop in order to test the VPN client - it worked fine, so I logged him out of the Telecom wireless thing, and hopped onto my own machine to download + setup the vpn connection. I then connected, and my colleague came back to his PC and started reading his email.. online.. at the same time as me. So we were both connected at the same time with no problems, and he was still accessing the Internet even after disconnecting from the hotspot's billing. Still, we're definately not complaining here ;)