Gauteng spending R241 million to roll out 160 Internet sites and 80 Wi-Fi hotspots
The Gauteng Department of e-Government announced that it will spend R241 million in the 2026/27 financial year on the expansion of its public Internet network in the province.
A further combined 160 WAN and LAN sites, and 80 more Wi-Fi hotspots are planned to be added in the financial year, bolstering the province’s existing network capacity.
According to an e-Government announcement, Gauteng now has 130 public Wi-Fi hotspots, adding 15 new sites between February 2026 and May 2026.
It added 44 new WAN sites during the period and 30 new LAN sites, bringing the combined total to 1,770 as of May 2026.
Of these sites, four can provide Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), the department said. It said the rollout of new sites and other projects in the 2025/26 financial year was an improvement.
“The department achieved 32 of its 38 planned targets, representing an overall performance rate of 84%,” it said.
The department recently presented its fourth-quarter performance report to members of the Gauteng Legislature’s e-Government Research and Development Committee.
Bonginkosi Dhlamini, MEC for e-Government said that one of the department’s notable achievements in recent years has been its investment in digital infrastructure.
“The expansion of high-speed broadband networks across government offices and public facilities has enabled greater connectivity and the adoption of new technologies,” he said.
“This robust and scalable infrastructure underpins our digital transformation journey and supports initiatives such as cloud computing, centralised data centres, and secure communication platforms.”
The department shared that it has invested R241 million in the 2026/27 financial year to mitigate its ageing infrastructure and strengthen existing ICT infrastructure.
It confirmed to MyBroadband that part of this strengthening included the rollout of new WAN, LAN and Wi-Fi sites in the province.
This included targeting 160 more WAN and LAN sites, with the department combining both into a single amount and 80 more Wi-Fi hotspots.
No more new CCTV cameras for Gauteng in the 2026/27 financial year
The addition of the new sites in the 2025/26 financial year showed marginal improvement compared to the department’s performance as noted in early 2026.
From March 2025 to October 2025, the number of government Wi-Fi hotspots in Gauteng had shrunk to 115, while WAN sites decreased to 1,311.
The largest decrease was for LAN sites in the province maintained by e-Government, which decreased by 352 to 385 as of October 2025.
These figures were revealed in the department’s budget speech in July 2025, where Dhlamini indicated that less than half of its targets were reached.
In its latest report, the department also indicated that it was not planning to install any new CCTV camera sites for the 2026/2027 financial year.
The department said its role was to provide the technology platform that supported the sites, but the expansion itself was the role of the Gauteng Department of Community Safety.
During May 2026, the Democratic Alliance (DA) revealed that the rollout of CCTV cameras across Gauteng had cost the province R124 million since the network’s inception.
It also revealed that around 269 of the province’s cameras were offline as of 15 May 2026, which amounted to 28% of the network being out of commission.
“This comes at a time when residents are in dire need for crime prevention measures,” the political party said.
“This province cannot afford a CCTV system where such a significant portion of the network is offline.”
At the time, Dhlamini indicated that the offline cameras were due to water-damaged batteries, vandalism and faulty inverters.
The DA said that maintenance costs for the province’s CCTV network had already exceeded R5.1 million, with an annual operating cost of between R12 million and R15 million.
E-Government responded to the DA and said that the overwhelming majority of the CCTV cameras in the province remain operational, with a total amount of 960 cameras installed.
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