GRIFFITH could soon become the most tech-savvy country town in Australia following a proposal to hook the main street up with free Wi-Fi.
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The idea was floated at last month's Griffith Business Chamber meeting as a way to attract more businesses and visitors to the city. Griffith City Council tourism manager Rick Matkowski said it was a great idea and would give the city an edge over other regional centres.
"We get a hell of a lot of business travellers in town and a lot of these people expect to have Wi-Fi, especially when they walk into a coffee shop," Mr Matkowski said.
"All our travellers go to the main street and nowadays it's sort of expected to have a hotspot. Nearly 40 per cent of our total visitors that come to town are business travellers and if we want to be a modern city, providing Wi-Fi would be part of what we need to do."
Mr Matkowski said he didn't know if it would be possible to hook up the entire main street with free Wi-Fi but it was a great tool for businesses looking to attract clientele.
"I don't know if it would work for the whole main street but if a coffee shop offered something like free Wi-Fi then people will stay longer, order more or even have their meetings at that shop and end up spending more money there," he said.
"We should also look at providing it in the airport because airports are often expected to have Wi-Fi connection for waiting passengers."
Anthony Salmon from Flexible Solutions said a number of technical hurdles needed to be surmounted before a project of such magnitude could be launched but he thought it was a great idea for the city.
"It wouldn't be extremely difficult to do but there would need to be a little bit of network design and such put into place before it would be feasible," Mr Salmon said.
"It would be a major attraction for the city.
"We're renowned for having motel rooms filled weeks in advance because of the amount of people who come here for business and it would make the city even more attraction for visitors to come here, or even for attracting bigger businesses to come to town."
Local computer enthusiast Joseph Murwood said it was a good idea but things like security and limiting the amount of downloads would need to be considered before going ahead with the proposal.
