Johannesburg, 27 Oct 2003
Telkom is engaged in an intensive WiFi feasibility study, having commissioned the first few hotspots as part of a pilot programme that will include 100 sites around SA.
"As part of the trials, we are targeting hotels, conference centres, business centres and office parks as well as airports and large shopping malls," said Nombulelo Moholi, Telkom`s Chief Sales and Marketing Officer.
"We have called it Telkom T-Zone and have installed the first access points at Southern Sun Hotels," Moholi said.
The first sites that are now live in Gauteng are the InterContinental Sandton Sun and Towers, InterContinental Palazzo and Holiday Inn Johannesburg International Airport Hotel.
More hotels will be added into the pool.
In the Durban area the Beverly Hills Hotel and Holiday Inn Durban Elangeni and in Cape Town, The Cullinan and Holiday Inn Cape Town are running the T-Zone service.
Telkom Web pages will be updated as more sites are activated. Visit www.telkom.co.za frequently for an updated list of more Southern Sun and other sites for details on the free trial service.
WiFi is a wireless communication service that allows palmtop and notebook users to connect to their company computer systems or the Internet from locations such as airports, convention centres and hotels. Internationally, the WiFi product and service offerings have matured, and more commercial services are being made available.
"It is early days to make a prediction of when Telkom will introduce a full commercial service in SA, but I expect it to be in the first half of 2004," Moholi said.
All it takes to use Telkom T-Zone hotspot is a laptop with an 802.11b interface. The SSID on the wireless network interface must be set to "telkom" and ADSL users can get access to their ADSL Internet account as usual.
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