Why is free WiFi so rare in South Africa?

Foxhound5366

Foxhound5366

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With uncapped fibre a very real thing in South Africa, what's with businesses being so stingy about making it freely available for customers? Even coffee shops and restaurants (where it makes perfect sense) seem to be skimping on this. They probably spend more on those terrible mints they give away for free with every meal.

What am I missing? Business owners who are too cheapskate? A desire to rather keep clients moving on rapidly rather than sitting in one place for a few hours?

Seattle Coffee has a pretty good deal where they offer you 1GB free per day to use within two hours of connection, which balances those needs neatly. The Mugg n Bean I was at seems to offer uncapped fibre WiFi (5ms ping) but throttled to 3MB download (which was fine for internet browsing).

So many other places: just nothing. Or (worst of all) the places with locked WiFi for their own management to use, and so sorry for the customers actually paying to be there. Hell if you're cheapskate, make people pay for an access code and add it to their bill ... but don't just pretend like it's 1992 and the internet doesn't exist.
 
ScottulusMaximus said:
Because they're restaurants and not isp's?

Free WiFi stopped being a selling point 5 years ago.
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Why though? How many other things do restaurants have which is of no value to clients (fancy decor pieces and the aforementioned little mints), whereas free uncapped WiFi would actually be useful. Restaurants and other places with sit-down clients are in the business of satisfying their clients' needs, and I'd rate that free internet is an actual need.
 
Most coffee shops / restaurants in Cape Town have free WiFi, and pretty good speeds too!

Delux Coffee in Buitenkant even has 100Mbps upload speeds. :whistling:

It's the large chain stores (I'm looking at you Mugg & Bean!) that have limits on WiFi accessibility and throttle WiFi speeds... most likely due to antiquated head corporate policies. The small independent outlets all seem to have decent WiFi.
 
genetic said:
Most coffee shops / restaurants in Cape Town have free WiFi, and pretty good speeds too!

Delux Coffee in Buitenkant even has 100Mbps upload speeds. :whistling:

It's the large chain stores (I'm looking at you Mugg & Bean!) that have limits on WiFi accessibility and throttle WiFi speeds... most likely due to antiquated head corporate policies. The small independent outlets all seem to have decent WiFi.
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Trust Cape Town to lead the way again lol. Here in Pretoria ... not so much.
 
Anyone connecting to a free wifi hotspot anywhere places network trust on whomever manages their free wifi service.

A simple DNS hack can give you some yucky "windows updates" but you guys continue the illusion that whatever coffee shop knows what they're doing in regards with IT security.
 
Moosedrool said:
Anyone connecting to a free wifi hotspot anywhere places network trust on whomever manages their free wifi service.

A simple DNS hack can give you some yucky "windows updates" but you guys continue the illusion that whatever coffee shop knows what they're doing in regards with IT security.
Click to expand...

Use a VPN if you're worried about security.
 
Moosedrool said:
Anyone connecting to a free wifi hotspot anywhere places network trust on whomever manages their free wifi service.

A simple DNS hack can give you some yucky "windows updates" but you guys continue the illusion that whatever coffee shop knows what they're doing in regards with IT security.
Click to expand...
I trust Windows and BitDefender to figure it out between themselves. You always get prompted to select whether you're connecting to a home or public network, so I presume they do something useful with that information.
 
Moosedrool said:
Anyone connecting to a free wifi hotspot anywhere places network trust on whomever manages their free wifi service.

A simple DNS hack can give you some yucky "windows updates" but you guys continue the illusion that whatever coffee shop knows what they're doing in regards with IT security.
Click to expand...
This, if I am at a restuarant/cafe and need to browse and not eat/socialise, I use my own data when browsing on my phone. For work, I use the company issued simcard and connect via the company vpn. Been doing this since 2008/2009 when companies started issuing dongles and simcards. Before that, it was only the "groot koppe" that generally got dongle/simcards.
 
Moosedrool said:
Anyone connecting to a free wifi hotspot anywhere places network trust on whomever manages their free wifi service.

A simple DNS hack can give you some yucky "windows updates" but you guys continue the illusion that whatever coffee shop knows what they're doing in regards with IT security.
Click to expand...
Beauty of a VPN like Windscribe, ProtonVPN etc.
 
Foxhound5366 said:
Why though? How many other things do restaurants have which is of no value to clients (fancy decor pieces and the aforementioned little mints), whereas free uncapped WiFi would actually be useful. Restaurants and other places with sit-down clients are in the business of satisfying their clients' needs, and I'd rate that free internet is an actual need.
Click to expand...

I guess it's not an actual need for me so can't see the appeal. With uncapped at home and a couple of gig of 4G it's a non issue, even for the data whore that I am.

And well at restaurants I generally eat, drink and talk to people.

The only time I ever look for free WiFi is at airports or abroad.
 
ScottulusMaximus said:
I guess it's not an actual need for me so can't see the appeal. With uncapped at home and a couple of gig of 4G it's a non issue, even for the data whore that I am.

And well at restaurants I generally eat, drink and talk to people.

The only time I ever look for free WiFi is at airports or abroad.
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Nice, but you can understand that not everyone is as lucky as you to have a couple gig of 4G, in a country like South Africa, right? Let's not let our privilege cloud our judgement.
 
Foxhound5366 said:
Nice, but you can understand that not everyone is as lucky as you to have a couple gig of 4G, in a country like South Africa, right? Let's not let our privilege cloud our judgement.
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None of the places mentioned cater for people who can't afford some mobile data.

Unless you're watching Netflix or something, in which case why are you at a restaurant, then you really don't need much data.
 
genetic said:
Use a VPN if you're worried about security.
Click to expand...

A VPN is great but you're still vulnerable locally.

1. Public wifi networks without private (per customer) passwords tends to suffer a lot from wireless SSID spoofing.
2. Your device still has to have connectivity to enable a VPN to connect which takes a few seconds before your company or vpn provider's DNS systems dictates where and how your traffic is directed.
3. a Intended malicious attack on public wifi networks normally involves onsite flooding the network, spoofing the same SSID and allowing devices to connect to the not so cool (Evil Twin) hotspot. Hell you might even break out on that hotspot if the hacker was generous.

You have to take a risk regardless.
 
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ScottulusMaximus said:
None of the places mentioned cater for people who can't afford some mobile data.

Unless you're watching Netflix or something, in which case why are you at a restaurant, then you really don't need much data.
Click to expand...
You obviously don’t have kids/teenagers.
 
Moosedrool said:
A VPN is great but you're still vulnerable locally.

1. Public wifi networks without private (per customer) passwords tends to suffer a lot from wireless SSID spoofing.
2. Your device still has to have connectivity to enable a VPN to connect which takes a few seconds before your company or vpn provider's DNS systems dictates where and how your traffic is directed.
3. a Intended malicious attack on public wifi networks normally involves onsite flooding the network, spoofing the same SSID and allowing devices to connect to the not so cool (Evil Twin) hotspot. Hell you might even break out on that hotspot if the hacker was generous.

You have to take a risk regardless.
Click to expand...

1. Who cares? You connect via an encrypted tunnel to the VPN server.
2. Just block connections without a VPN.
3. Again as per nr. 1 above who cares?
 
Moosedrool said:
A VPN is great but you're still vulnerable locally.

1. Public wifi networks without private (per customer) passwords tends to suffer a lot from wireless SSID spoofing.
2. Your device still has to have connectivity to enable a VPN to connect which takes a few seconds before your company or vpn provider's DNS systems dictates where and how your traffic is directed.
3. a Intended malicious attack on public wifi networks normally involves onsite flooding the network, spoofing the same SSID and allowing devices to connect to the not so cool (Evil Twin) hotspot. Hell you might even break out on that hotspot if the hacker was generous.

You have to take a risk regardless.
Click to expand...

A decent VPN will protect you from all the points you mentioned above.

1. VPN traffic is encrypted by using at least AES-256 encryption, so even if you connect to a spoofed network - your data is encrypted... also it's impossible for some guy to crack AES-256 encryption in the time you're sitting at Wimpy.
2. I don't see the issue?
3. See point 1.
 
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