People in the Western Cape used 250,000 GB of free Wi-Fi in a month
The Western Cape government’s free public Wi-Fi hotspot users consumed around 250TB of data from the province’s network in a month.
This was revealed in a recent statement from the Western Cape provincial parliament’s standing committee on premier and constitutional matters following an oversight visit to the province’s network, infrastructure and operations centre (NIOC).
The NIOC serves as the nerve centre from where all connectivity related to the provincial government’s services — and its free public hotspots — are monitored and checked for any possible outages.
The Western Cape first started rolling out free Wi-Fi hotspots in 2015.
As of 27 July 2022, it had 1,328 public Wi-Fi hotspots, an increase of 26 from the first week of June.
With citizens using 250TB of data in June 2022, the DA-led provincial government said this translates to a R25 million saving based on the current retail price of approximately R100 per GB for data.
It should be noted that Vodacom, MTN, Cell C, and Telkom sell prepaid data for less than R100 per GB.
The map embedded below shows the locations of the Western Cape’s free Wi-Fi hotspots.
Each hotspot provides users with a free data allocation of up to 6GB per month.
They run alongside 1,911 provincial public sites with broadband access that was rolled out in partnership with Liquid Intelligent Technologies.
Of these sites, 1,549 were upgraded to a minimum connection speed of 100Mbps as part of phase 2 of the initiative, which started in October 2017. The outstanding sites are scheduled to be upgraded by September 2022.
The Wi-Fi hotspots are located at schools, health facilities, libraries, and corporate sites.
The DA previously said the second-most used hotspot in the province during April was Masakheke Combined School in Robertson, suggesting students, in particular, were making heavy use of the data.
The committee also visited Grootte Schuur, which offers free Wi-Fi, where they found that people waiting could use their devices to access communication, the news, and look for job opportunities.
The national ANC-led government has promised to provide 10GB of free mobile data to every South African household within the next three years, and 50GB by 2025/2026.
Loading ...