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SA embraces WiFi sharing

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 31 Jan 2014
Fon sees SA as a base for expansion of its crowd-sourced WiFi network across Africa.
Fon sees SA as a base for expansion of its crowd-sourced WiFi network across Africa.

In the two weeks since MWeb's Fon network was launched, over 2 000 MWeb ADSL customers have signed.

This is according to MWeb - SA's second-largest Internet service provider (ISP) after Telkom - which recently announced an exclusive partnership with the global WiFi hotspot service. "Over 2 000 ADSL customers are already becoming Fon hotspots around SA, and connecting to 12 million Fon spots globally."

The ISP says some 7 000 orders have been placed for Fon routers since launch - and it expects the number to climb quickly.

Fon, the global WiFi network founded in 2006 in Spain, but now represented on four continents, is made up of Fon community members, who share a part of their bandwidth as a separate WiFi signal. In return, Fon members are able to securely access any other Fon WiFi hotspot both locally and globally.

MWeb CEO Derek Hershaw says Fon connections in SA hit the 1 200 mark within 10 days of launching.

Last week, Fon announced it has over 12 million users globally. The network expects to broaden to 35 million users by 2016. According to Fon, in the UK, France and Belgium, more than 10% of households have a Fon hotspot, and Japan and Brazil are catching up. Fon has calculated it has significant coverage in more than 1 000 major cities.

Fon COO Alex Puregger positions WiFi as the future driver for Internet connectivity on the African continent and globally. "We are very confident of the growth potential in sub-Saharan Africa and see SA as a base for expansion into the rest of the continent."

Puregger says the company's aim is to eventually have a crowd-sourced WiFi network where everyone who contributes, connects for free. "We are thinking of it as global uncapped WiFi."

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