Tshwane’s free Wi-Fi is a mess

Tests by MyBroadband have revealed that several of the City of Tshwane’s free Wi-Fi hotspots are not functioning.

The ambitious Tshwane Free Wi-Fi initiative was started in 2013 while the city was run by the ANC and led by then-mayor Kgosienthso Ramokgopa, the current-day electricity minister.

Its goal was to blanket the city with free Wi-Fi coverage in public areas. The project had established 921 free Internet zones across these locations by 2016, at which users had consumed 2,289 terabytes of data.

Each user could use up to 1GB of data on the network daily, with speeds advertised at 15Mbps.

People who had limited Internet connectivity at home — including students — benefitted from the project.

MyBroadband tested the service in 2017 and found it was performing well below its promised speeds.

Despite being as close as possible to the hotspots, our download speeds ranged between 0.05Mbps and 0.36Mbps, while upload speeds varied from 0.02Mbps  to 0.49Mbps.

At the time, DA member of the mayoral committee Cilliers Brink, who is currently Tshwane’s mayor, told MyBroadband that the city was concerned over allegations of slow download speeds.

The DA was also worried that the multi-million-rand tender for the project, awarded to Project Isizwe, was bleeding the city’s coffers dry.

According to Brink, the project had racked up a bill of R320 million, including R75 million in value-added services. That works out to an effective cost of around R305,000 per hotspot.

The contract with the Alan Knott-Craig Jnr company was not renewed, and the metro appointed Ulwembu Business Services to run the project from a relaunch in September 2018.

A spokesperson for then-mayor Solly Msimanga said that the metro remained committed to putting out free Wi-Fi on a “solid financial footing” and ensuring the service continued.

Cilliers Brink, Mayor of the City of Tshwane

Little to no connectivity

In June 2022, MyBroadband tested Tshwane Free Wi-Fi at the Centurion Squash Club, Doringfloof Tennis Club, Irene Library, Lyttelton Library, Pierre van Ryneveld Library and Clinic.

Earlier that year, the city said its free Wi-Fi Internet connectivity had grown to 1,576 zones.

We found that Wi-Fi connectivity was only available at two locations — the Irene and Lyttelton libraries — which recorded average download speeds of 8.13Mbps and 2.87Mbps, respectively.

Our tester went to the same five locations in May 2024 and could only get a working Wi-Fi connection at one spot.

At three of the other locations, there were no public Wi-Fi networks available. This included Lyttelton Library, where a security guard confirmed the free Wi-Fi had not been available for some time.

At the fourth location, there was an unsecured “COT-Guest” network but this had no Internet connectivity or login page for Tshwane Free-Wifi.

The only location where we were able to establish a connection was the Centurion Squash Club, which achieved an average of 4.07Mbps download speeds and uploads of 0.32Mbps. Average latency was 47.83ms.

The speeds are still well below 15Mbps and poor when compared to LTE, 5G and fixed services like fibre, where double-digit speeds are common.

It is unclear whether the free Wi-Fi service still enjoys widespread usage, has been downsized, or is slowly being switched off.

The City of Tshwane’s website no longer provides a list of the hotspots, and there is no longer a mobile app to find Wi-Fi locations or use other value-added services.

The last update about the project on the Tshwane Free Wi-Fi Facebook page was made in August 2016, while the TshWi-Fi Twitter/X page has not posted since February 2021.

The only working Tshwane Free Wi-Fi hotspot during MyBroadband’s testing in May 2024.

Testing done by Wikus Steyn, written by Hanno Labuschagne.