Free WiFi for Pretoria details

Users of the City of Tshwane metropolitan municipality’s free Wi-Fi hotspots will be able to get maximum speeds of 1 Megabit per-second and use 200MB per day.
This is according to Alan Knott-Craig Jr, former head of iBurst, Mxit, and World of Avatar, and founder of Project Isizwe, the non-profit responsible for delivering the free Wi-Fi project.
Tshwane recently announced plans to roll out free Wi-Fi throughout the metropolitan municipality, beginning with a R1-million project covering 5 areas:
- TUT Soshanguve Campus,
- University of Pretoria Hatfield Campus,
- Tshwane North College,
- Mamelodi Community Centre,
- Church Square in the Pretoria CBD.
These zones make up the first phase of the project which is scheduled to be finished by the end of November 2013.

Kgosientso Ramokgopa, executive mayor of Tshwane
According to Tshwane mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa, the idea is to eventually cover the whole of the Tshwane metropolitan municipality with free Wi-Fi hotspots, with phase 2 targeting 213 schools in Soshanguve, Mamelodi, and Atteridgeville during 2014.
The project does not aim to provide coverage inside buildings, but rather for outdoor public areas. Users will simply be able to connect to and use the hotspots without needing a user account or Wi-Fi security key first.
Low equipment costs
Answering questions at a recent press event about the R1-million price tag for phase 1 of the free Wi-Fi project, Knott-Craig said that it represents the total cost of building and operating the hotspots for 5 years.
Knott-Craig said that part of the reason they are able to do it for so comparatively little, aside from being a non-profit, is because networking equipment, particularly for Wi-Fi, had become cheap.
When asked which manufacturers they would use, Knott-Craig said that Project Isizwe will use MikroTik and Ubiquity equipment.
Enthusiast network builders such as the wireless user groups operating around South Africa successfully use kit from these manufacturers in their metropolitan and wide area networks.
Cheaper bandwidth
Another important part of the costs that have come down dramatically in the last few years is bandwidth, said Knott-Craig, which they will also cover in the R1-million price.
He explained that due to their educational focus, most of their bandwidth will probably come from the South African National Research Network (SANReN).
This should give the Wi-Fi network much cheaper bandwidth prices than if they bought it from commercial entities.
Should they need to, Knott-Craig said they could also buy bandwidth from Neotel.

Alan Knott-Craig Jr
What happens when demand starts exceeding supply?
Asked whether they have made provision in the R1-million to grow the capacity of the Wi-Fi network as more users start using it, Knott-Craig said that they will have enough bandwidth for what the network is built for.
He explained that the network isn’t intended for those who can already afford ADSL or a 3G connection, but for people who have little or no access to the Internet.
“There’s an infinite demand for bandwidth,” Knott-Craig said. “The intent of this is not to have the solution to that at launch.”
The service could be made faster if telcos and Internet companies donate their asymmetric bandwidth, but it will work even if they don’t, Knott-Craig said.
He said that quite a few companies in South Africa sit with asymmetric bandwidth. “Mxit being one of them,” Knott-Craig said.
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