Free Wi-Fi tested in South Africa’s biggest mall

MyBroadband tested Fourways Mall’s recently launched free Wi-Fi network and was impressed with its overall performance.

South Africa’s biggest mall enabled the new network sometime in August 2024.

It forms part of several redevelopment investments aimed at revitalising the customer’s shopping experience, attracting more business, and improving the mall’s precarious financial position.

MyBroadband sent our resident engineer to put the network through its paces during a weekday afternoon visit in early September.

Our man in the mall found the initial sign-up to the network was straightforward and quick.

After connecting to the “@Fourways_Free_WiFi” network, he was directed to a browser page that required registering with a cellphone number, name, and surname.

As with many free public Wi-Fi networks, he also had to consent to his information being used for marketing purposes.

The sign-up page had a link to the Wi-Fi network’s full terms and conditions.

These revealed that the network was provided by Entelek IT Services, a Johannesburg-based corporate and event Wi-Fi network service provider.

Using the MyBroadband Speed Test mobile app on Samsung Galaxy S22+ and Oppo Reno 5 smartphones, our engineer achieved average download and upload speeds of just over 3Mbps, while latency averaged below 10ms.

While this performance is likely to be slower than when using mobile networks in many public areas, it is more than enough for general smartphone use and should even be sufficient for more data-heavy applications like video streaming.

Our tester was more impressed with the network’s extensive coverage, which made it accessible in all open areas he walked through, even extending into the parking lot.

The only areas where the connection struggled were inside certain shops.

The experience suggests that the network layout was well-architected, with high-performing access points installed in optimal locations.

The connection also appeared to be truly uncapped — at least for typical usage — as we conducted numerous speed tests without being warned that we were running out of data.

The only major taboo we spotted in the terms and conditions was using the connection for peer-to-peer file sharing.

Therefore, you are likely to be throttled significantly when trying to download torrents on the network.

This is not uncommon with free Internet solutions, as torrent downloads can strain bandwidth capacity.

Coffee shop Wi-Fi comparison

The tester also compared the mall’s free Wi-Fi with the smaller networks at two outlets where people also tend to spend lots of time on the Internet — the Seattle and Starbucks coffee shops.

Seattle’s network was only free for the first 1GB of data and three hours of use. It posted near identical speeds to the mall’s free Wi-Fi network.

Starbucks had a secured network that required entering a password.

After getting it from the barista while ordering a cup of coffee, our tester recorded much faster speeds, with downloads averaging over 44Mbps and uploads of around 18Mbps.

At the time of the test, over a dozen people were on their laptops and smartphones in the store, many likely using the Wi-Fi connection.

However, comparing Starbucks’ Wi-Fi speeds to the mall’s is not entirely fair.

The mall-wide network needs to support a much higher number of concurrent connections across a substantially larger area.

Therefore, limiting bandwidth to just the right level can ensure a solid Internet performance for as many users as possible at any given time.

The table below compares the average speeds of Fourways Mall’s new free open Wi-Fi network with the free password-protected Wi-Fi in the Starbucks store at the same mall.

Network	Download speed	Upload speed	Latency
Fourways Mall Wi-Fi	3.25Mbps	3.17Mbps	7.4ms
Starbucks Wi-Fi	44.34Mbps	18.26Mbps	5.3ms