Free taxi Wi-Fi a hit

Approximately 4,500 daily commuters are using the free Wi-Fi service offered in 60 mini-bus taxis in Gauteng.

This is according to Wi-Taxi South Africa CEO Brian Mdluli, who was speaking to Talk Radio 702 on Wednesday (8 July).

Wi-Taxi is the technology partner for the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco), who launched the service on 12 June.

Mdluli said that there are currently more than 60 vehicles on the road with Wi-Fi capability in Joburg. He said that on average, 75 commuters use the service on a daily basis, per vehicle.

He said that each taxi was using between 200MB – 400MB of data per taxi per day. “The user acceptability and the acceptance of the entire project has been really pleasantly surprising for us,” he said.

Mdluli pointed out that until the 1 August, there is no cap for the service, “however from the 1 August, the system will allocate 50MB of data per user per month”.

He said that taxi commuters are very tech savvy and have taken on the service very easily to date.

It was earlier reported that a total of 1,500 taxis and 50 taxi ranks around the country will have access to free limited Wi-Fi connection within six months, moving to other provinces.

Santaco said the installation of Wi-Fi in all 250,000 taxis and taxi ranks would be done within three years.

Santaco, in conjunction with Telkom, aims to roll-out between 4,000-5,000 Wi-Fi equipped taxis each month.

Wi-Taxi will offer a broad range of services on the platform, including a commercial platform and advertising space.

The following service are on offer:

• Free 50mb Wi-Fi per month, for internet access;
• Purchase of airtime across all mobile networks;
• Purchase of Wi-Taxi mobile data bundles;
• Purchase of electricity vouchers;
• Financial Services ( Funeral, House Hold, Passenger policies);
• Legal Services.

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