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In the press

Brisbane's first public access IoT network

In October 2016 Brisbane got its first public access network, hosted from a rooftop at the Queensland University of Technology. It made Brisbane the third Australian city on the global Things Network after Wollongong and Sydney, and it followed the same model, being a university foundation partner, free access for anyone in range, and coverage from a small number of well-placed gateways.

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Catherine Caruana-McManus Director of Sales and Strategy · 3 August 2026 · 3 min read
A rooftop antenna overlooking the Brisbane River bend and city skyline at golden hour
A campus rooftop, and from it a capital city brought onto an open network.
On this page
  1. The QUT partnership
  2. Where it sat in the national picture

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By late 2016 the pattern was established. Find a university willing to host and champion the infrastructure, install a small number of gateways in good positions, open the network to anyone, and let the use cases arrive from the community rather than specifying them up front.

The QUT partnership

QUT's Institute for Future Environments partnered with Meshed to launch the network, hosting the city's first gateway.

Professor Bronwyn Harch, the institute's executive director, framed the value in terms of opening up opportunities for Brisbane rather than in terms of the technology itself, which is consistently how the university partners in this programme described their interest.

Where it sat in the national picture

Brisbane joined the global Things Network, of which Meshed is the Australian representative, following Wollongong in April 2016 and Sydney in July.

The significance of a third city is that it stopped being a pilot. Three networks in three states, all built on the same foundation-partner model, established that the approach was repeatable rather than a product of one favourable set of local circumstances.

A rooftop antenna overlooking a subtropical river city at golden hour
The gateway that opened the city. Hosted by a university, open to anyone in range.

This launch was reported by IoT Hub, Australia's Internet of Things trade publication.

“Meshed brings LoRaWAN to Brisbane”, IoT Hub, 26 October 2016.

Catherine Caruana-McManus
Written by
Catherine Caruana-McManus

Director of Sales and Strategy at Meshed. A recognised leader in intelligent asset management & smart cities & has delivered hundreds of successful customer deployments across Australia, Asia Pacific and the US. Founding Director of the Connected Technology Alliance Australia and former Director at KPMG and IBM.

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