The City of Tshwane in South Africa now has access to free Wi-Fi and aims to show the rest of the world how to deliver the service to poorer communities, it was announced today (26th of November).
Project Isizewe are behind the rollout and the founder and CEO, Alan Knott-Craig, said South Africa is testing the waters in terms of free Wi-Fi but said there’s no reason why the service can’t be available to all of Africa.
“We’d like to show Africa, and the world, a model for how governments can provide free internet access in low income communities, in the most frugal manner possible,” he explained. “Project Isizwe believes that access to the internet should be considered an essential service, like water or electricity. And just like water and electricity, it should be available to everyone, regardless of circumstance.”
According to mybroadband.co.za, phase one of the scheme has supplied the TUT Soshanguve Campus, University of Pretoria Hatfield Campus, Tshwane North College, Mamelodi Community Centre and Church Square in the Pretoria CBD with free Wi-Fi.
It is hoped that the Wi-Fi rollout will help uplift the economy and the network will mostly be used for educational purposes by students, hence the hotspot location choices.
Those using the service will be limited to using 250MBs of data a day for each device they connect. In addition, certain websites will be blocked, such as sites containing pornography, reports iafrica.com.
