Free WiFi initiative Project Isizwe will roll out a further 2 000 free Internet zones within the City of Tshwane within the next 18 months, says a senior executive.
Speaking at the WiFi Innovation Summit this morning, Project Isizwe co-founder and CIO James Devine revealed the City of Tshwane has decided to roll out WiFi everywhere across the city. This means providing a free WiFi hotspot within walking distance of every citizen within the next year-and-a-half.
"So in an urban environment, there will be a WiFi hotspot within 1km of every single person in the City of Tshwane," Devine said, adding that in the rural context this would mean placing a free Internet zone within 5km of every person.
Since its establishment, in August 2013, Project Isizwe has provided free WiFi coverage for 14.5% of the city's landmass and for about 20% of its population, Devine noted.
The project, which currently focuses in low-income communities, provides 250MB per user per day; a curated network (with peer-to-peer, or bulk protocols that are shaped or restricted); allows generic Internet traffic; and provides unrestricted access to educational content.
Devine revealed the network has average speeds of 7.5Mbps and sees just over 4 000 concurrent connections at any one time.
In addition to providing free connectivity to Tshwane residents, Project Isizwe also provides a video-on-demand (VOD) service over the network, called WiFi TV, says Devine. This is a community initiative produced and delivered by young citizen journalists.
WiFi Chat was another product recently added to the mix, said Devine, explaining this is a curated chat service which enables users to talk directly to the municipality in and around the City of Tshwane, on a free and unrestricted basis.
More services will also be added soon, he stated, one of which will be the WiFi Drive-in. "This will give users the ability to watch for free all the content that you would see at a Blockbuster video store. This service will be live by the end of next month," Devine explained.
He added the VOD service would be enabled at specific Tshwane free WiFi locations, and accessed via mobile devices.
Devine also revealed Project Isizwse will launch WiFi Voice, which is a voice calling between devices connected to the Tshwane WiFi network. The free voice service will not only allow users to talk to each other for free, but also to call the municipality to report service outages.
"The City of Tshwane is now taking the stance that free WiFi is a basic service. Just like you get your basic electrical allotment every month, you also get your free basic Internet," said Devine.
"That means the Internet is available to everyone and the Internet is the ultimate leveller. It is the ultimate game-changer, so no matter who you are, or how much you earn, you all get access to the same amount of information once you get onto the Internet. And with the right information, you can make the right decisions."
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