Knowledge workers in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban will soon have access to a bus service that allows them to work online while they make their daily commute.
Imperial Fleet Services plans to extend its broadband bus service, which is being piloted with Nedbank and is transporting staff from Centurion to Sandton, to other cities and companies.
Following the success of the pilot, Imperial Fleet Services is offering the broadband bus as a commercial service under the Amasondo iBuzz brand, the company says.
Onboard technology
The buses are fitted with cellular Internet connectivity from Vodacom, notebooks, wireless LAN connectivity and Microsoft productivity software, says Nashua Mobile, which supplied and integrated the onboard technology.
Each bus has a 9Mbps Internet connection that offers enough bandwidth for 40 PC users to comfortably browse the Web, use collaboration and messaging software, and collect e-mail, says Nashua Mobile MD Mark Taylor.
Nashua Mobile also plans to add a voice service to the broadband bus, allowing commuters to log into the office telecommunications infrastructure to pick up messages and join conference calls, he says.
Imperial Fleet Services CIO Louis Volschenk says the Johannesburg metropolitan area was the initial target city. The service will be expanded into the western, eastern and southern areas of Johannesburg, as more buses are introduced, he says. Cape Town and Durban will also be targeted.
Volschenk adds that Imperial Fleet Services has approached other companies regarding the use of the iBuzz, and discussions are under way.
Crunching numbers
Taylor says, depending on the connectivity and applications required, the data set-up on the bus should cost about R30 000 once off, with the data usage amounting to around R2 400 per month. The data usage cost would depend on the number of users and the applications they work on, he says.
Taylor adds that companies may choose to share the costs of running the service with their employees. Assuming a company pays an employee R200 000 per year, the hourly rate is approximately R100 per hour, he says.
Taylor says if a company has an average of 20 people on a bus, who spend one hour each way going to and from work (two hours per day), the potential increased productivity across all 20 employees would amount to R4 000 per day, R20 000 per week and over R1 million per year.
"That's aside from the softer benefits that come from happier employees who are not stressed by traffic when commuting to work, and are less likely to leave the company to work somewhere closer to home."
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