Tshwane’s plans for free Wi-Fi mess

The City of Tshwane has told MyBroadband that it is planning an infrastructural overhaul of its free Wi-Fi service.

It intends to do this to restore stability to the network following years of vandalism, theft, and inadequate funding, which have degraded core infrastructure.

Launched in 2013, the first phase of the Tshwane Free Wi-Fi project was initiated and funded by an ANC-led municipal government.

However, problems started a few years later when the DA took over the municipality, and it noticed irregularities in the finances.

In 2017, the Auditor General declared R180 million spent on the Wi-Fi network as “unlawful and irregular”.

The project was reportedly paid for by grant funding, provided under a section of the Municipal Finance Management Act meant for non-profit organisations and charities.

The City said that most of the current infrastructure has not been replaced or maintained for over ten years, and load-shedding, vandalism, and theft have further contributed to its degradation.

Dwindling network quality has been attributed to increased civil construction and tree growth between transmission points and hotspots due to the entire network relying on radio links.

This has resulted in an unstable network with low availability, which the City has put on its back burner.

Given Tshwane’s constrained budget, it has had to adjust its focus to more imminent issues, including basic service provision, such as water, electricity, and roads.

“Owing to the current financial circumstances of the city, the priority is on core services and revenue-generating activities,” the City said.

“The city does not have the level of funding to replace most of the equipment due for a refresh, at the current moment.”

However, it does see a future for the Wi-Fi network, which it once envisaged as being the most extensive and stable network in the country, by reconfiguring its architecture.

“The focus of the model is not on the number of hotspots on the ground but high availability of the network service,” the City said.

“This model will see most high sites being decommissioned due to age, vandalism and theft.”

The City plans to do this by moving the network away from radio links and over to its corporate fibre infrastructure.

This will allow for increased security of its infrastructure, as most fibre sites are within the City’s campuses. This will also decrease the capital investment required.

Part of reconfiguring its architecture will include the City decommissioning several transmission points and free Internet zones with outdated infrastructure.

The City is aware of the dire need for the Internet in schools, libraries, and clinics. However, it believes increased awareness and security are needed so that communities can care for their infrastructure.

Asked for its latest user statistics, Tshwane provided MyBroadband with its network user numbers for the past three months.

The network has seen an average of 238,968 monthly logins, with an average of 16.21TB used per month. This means that each user logged in only consumed an average of 68MB per session.

This low service usage is said to have been caused by the winter period despite all users being allowed a maximum of 1GB per day and having access to speeds of up to 15Mbps.

MyBroadband tested the City of Tshwane’s free Wi-Fi service in 2022 and was surprised to find that some sites still work, even though the app seems to have disappeared

The table below shows the average Tshwane free Wi-Fi service usage from the past three months.

Description	June	July	August	Average
Logins	289,637	193,743	233,524	238,968
Overall Usage	19.79TB	15.48TB	13.37TB	16.21TB