Since we started this project, we have been working hard to implement Wi-Fi zones and Hotspots in towns across the state. We now have 17 active Zones and Hotspots (some of which are still in progress), using a total of 33 pieces of equipment, so we thought it was a good time to look back and see how much use our free public zones are getting.

Our first two zones, in Bethel and Royalton, were up and running by July of last year. By August, a zone in Rochester had joined them, and over the next six months, we installed a number of other hotspots and zones.

As we add more zones, it’s nice to see the total number of people logging onto each zone going up. In fact, since August, 20,350 distinct clients have logged into the system at one of the locations where there is a zone or hotspot:

Distinct Wi-Fi Users By Month

We also saw that people were downloading Gigabytes upon Gigabytes of information. In fact, 1,686.83 GBs of data has been transferred so far through our networks:

Data Transferred through WiFi zones

The averages of usage vary greatly between some of our larger zones, and some of our smaller hotspots, but you can check out the overall averages in the chart here:

Average WiFi users by month

So, you might ask yourself, what are people doing on these networks? While we cannot see directly what page a client was on, we are able to determine the type of internet that our users are accessing. Here is a list of the top five:

Top Applications by Use

As you can see, Facebook, YouTube, and random web browsing reign supreme.

If you haven’t tried one of these zones yet, you can see a map of where they are located here:

We hope you find them useful!