Vodacom has started zero-rating data used to access five South African educational websites approved by the Department of Education, according to the operator\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
The promotion will be available until March 2015, Vodacom said, and means that it will be possible to access the 5 sites without paying for the data used to browse them.<\/p>\n
Wikipedia is not among the sites listed as zero-rated, despite a big push from the Wikimedia Foundation for operators to join its Wikipedia Zero initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n In it\u2019s campaign, Wikimedia uses MTN as an example of an operator that\u2019s come to the party in terms of providing school students with free access to Wikipedia.<\/p>\n Asked about\u00a0its decision to exclude Wikipedia from the list of zero-rated sites, a Vodacom spokesperson told MyBroadband that this was the first part of a larger programme the company was putting together to support free access to educational resources.<\/p>\n “We are looking at the possibility of supplying free access to Wikipedia as part of that wider programme,” Vodacom said. “Our key overall concern is to provide access to resources relevant to the schools’ curriculum.”<\/p>\n Details of Vodacom’s larger free access to educational resources programme\u00a0will be\u00a0announced at a later date.<\/p>\n “Our overall drive in\u00a0supporting education has involved equipping 40 ICT teacher training centres across the country and also equipping almost 900 schools with ICT resources,” Vodacom said.<\/p>\n Vodacom subscribers will be able to access the following sites for free until March 2015:<\/p>\n Free data campaign from SA goes global<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n SA has one of the world\u2019s poorest education systems: report<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Truth about SA\u2019s mathematics, science education quality<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cReal education\u201d more important than tertiary education: SABC boss<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n
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