WugTube: YouTube without any bandwidth limitations

WugTube brings free video streaming to wireless community members

Wireless User Groups (WUGs) – which are free wireless community LANs - are gaining momentum in South Africa.  These networks are used for a variety of services like file sharing, online gaming, VoIP and messaging services. 

The fact that there are no speed limitations (other than technical and physical constraints) and no usage limits means that users typically enjoy higher speeds and more freedom than what their internet connections offer them.

The latest addition to the list of services available on both the Pretoria Wireless User Group (PTAWUG) and the Cape Town Wireless User Group (CTWUG) networks is ‘WugTube’.  WugTube is a YouTube-type service using PHPMotion, but without the bandwidth costs and potentially slow speeds associated with using it over an Internet connection.

“We customized the service for PTAWUG - added logos into the videos, registration and the like,” says PTAWUG co-founder Dawie Joubert.  “This was done by a member as an experiment to create a place where videos could be quickly uploaded and shared, and has now evolved into a main WUG service.  Best of all - it's fast and it does not eat your cap.”

According Joubert the service proved to be very popular amount members, and so far around 30,000 videos have been watched using WugTube.  Joubert says that the current content includes the normal humorous "iemand val sy gat af" videos, but also includes technical training videos, educational and science videos, videos of high site installs and videos of wugmeets or wugparties.

CTWUG’s Johann Stoltz says that the service has been growing in popularity on their network as well.  “The site is slowly but surely picking up, we used to run the script from http://www.vidiscript.com  and it was very popular,” says Stoltz.

WugTube discussion