Free WiFi for Cape Town trains
Metrorail in the Western Cape is rolling out free Wi-Fi internet access at train stations, starting with Cape Town Station – with plans to push connectivity onto the trains themselves.
According to a report in the Cape Times, this forms part of a greater turnaround strategy for the company.
“We will have Wi-Fi on Cape Town Station. This will give our commuters some fun to do while they wait for their trains,” Metrorail Western Cape manager Mthuthulezi Swartz told the paper.
Plans are also afoot to offer Wi-Fi on carriages too, with the new Metrorail mobile app then allowing users to keep track of trains at all times.
“The next phase would be to get the Wi-Fi on board the trains. They (commuters) will then be able to track a train’s performance while on board. So if a train stops in the middle of nowhere we would then be able to know why the train is standing still.”
“The same goes for when a train knocks someone down or there is some sort of incident,” Swartz was quoted saying.
Cape Town Station will be the first to receive connectivity, with all stations on the southern line from Cape Town to Muizenberg to receive the service next.
Metrorail said it would carry the cost of all equipment and the connection fee, the paper reported.
There’s no word on the connection speed or how big the data cap is, but users will be able to purchase more data when their cap is depleted.
“We will of course limit commuters to a certain amount of megabytes. If commuters want more they would have to buy more megabytes. For now we are only implementing this in the southern region because it’s the shortest distance from Cape Town,” Swartz said.
(With Sapa)
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