Yeah isn't it amazing.
Where the whole country could/should have been 5 or more years ago.
On holiday recently at my folks place in Sedgefield last month I had the experience of using Knysna's Uninet connection. It isn't fast, but it works and is free. See explanation further down.
In the attached article there is a picture of the children at their computers at the Smutsville Primary School. Smutsville is part of Sedgefield and recently Cameron Dugmore (MEC of Education) and Co had those new computers installed and Uninet set up the internet for them.
To think that Telkom wanted to stop Knysna's Wifi Project in it's infancy. Look what we would have missed out on!
Even my own children, one of which has already finished school has missed out on the basics of using computers at school with an affordable internet connection, although in my children's case I taught them most of what they know and built them their own computers and they use it to search for information for projects at home.
I used the free wireless link when I was at Sedgefield and found it to be acceptable.
I was using our HP Compaq 6710 Notebook with XP installed and it found Uninet's Wireless connection immediately on the built in Intel 802.11a/b/g connection. Admittingly my folks are within range of a Wireless Hot Spot which I could see out of the dining room window and the strength of the connection was reflected as Good.
The actual connection from what I can see gives preference to secure websites like Internet Banking and to my amazement I could even trade using Standard Financial Markets. GMail although I do not use it works fine, while I found difficulty in connecting to MWeb's Message Centre. While I was there I sent Uninet a web based email about the slowness to connect to MWeb and not that I had a reply from them, it started to work a day or so after that email. Not sure if that was me, but the folks also had trouble in the past to connect to MWeb and now it seems OK. The folks have moved their main email address to GMail and in time they will stop using MWeb.
Loading of websites is nothing like ADSL as some websites take a long time to load if they load at all. But it works and is free and without having to plug my Notebook into something I was able to use the internet freely when I felt like it.
There were times during the day when the internet seemed bogged down and I am not sure what this could be attributed to as there was one or two days where the wind was quite strong which could have been the reason.
Tried Skype. No go there.
Otherwise two thumbs up to Knysna Municipality and Uninet.
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