Stellenbosch is planning to provide free Wi-Fi Internet access to everyone in the town. This is according to Stellenbosch mayor Conrad Sidego.<\/p>\n
Sidego said that they are planning to make Stellenbosch a Wi-Fi town\u2013 an initiative by Stellenbosch, Mxit and the University of Stellenbosch.<\/p>\n
The service will be offered free of charge to anyone, and no registration for the service will be needed. The service will be limited to 1Mbps speeds, and capped at 500MB usage per day, but there are hopes that this can be increased over time.<\/p>\n
Large downloads will be prohibited, but all other services, such as gaming, web surfing, messaging and VoIP, will be supported.<\/p>\n
A free 1Mbps Wi-Fi connection with a 500MB daily cap might be just the ticket for Stellenbosch gamers living on a shoe-string budget.<\/p>\n
Stellenbosch councillor and head of the municipality\u2019s finance portfolio, Pieter Venter, explained that the trial network will go live on Friday (24 February).<\/p>\n
This trial Wi-Fi network will cover the town centre, and will run for two to three weeks before extending the network to the greater Stellenbosch area.<\/p>\n
The next phase involves rolling out the network to all populated areas within the Stellenbosch municipality. Venter explained that the network will reach as far as Franschhoek and Pniel.<\/p>\n
Venter explained that the core Wi-Fi network is already in place. This Wi-Fi network is already used to connect the municipal offices and carry municipal calls (hence cutting costs and limiting their reliance on Telkom).<\/p>\n
All that needs to be done now it to put repeaters closer to residents to “fill in” the network and boost coverage.\u00a0 These repeaters will be put on lamp poles and on suitable high sites.<\/p>\n
Venter said that they wanted to provide a free Wi-Fi network to Stellenbosch residents for years, but that Internet access costs (hence national and international bandwidth) was a problem. Mxit stepped in to solve this problem for Stellenbosch by making available their unused capacity.<\/p>\n
Mxit CEO Alan Knott-Craig Jr. said that they are assisting with the Wi-Fi project at the request of the mayor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cWe are psyched to help promote Stellenbosch as the true tech capital of Africa. Although free Wi-Fi can never compete in performance with paid-for services, it does provide a magnet for creativity and engineers,\u201d said Knott-Craig.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur primary value-add is the unused bandwidth coming into our data centre (770 million messages a day requires a fair amount of capacity),\u201d said Knott-Craig.<\/p>\n
Venter said that the Mxit bandwidth will serve their initial needs, and hopes that organizations such as the University of Stellenbosch and SEACOM will also assist when the need arises for additional bandwidth.<\/p>\n
Venter highlighted that they do not want to compete against paid-for broadband services like ADSL or 3G, hence the 1Mbps and 500MB cap limitations.<\/p>\n
Venter is confident that this initiative will not only boost Internet access and the economy of Stellenbosch, but also attract entrepreneurs and technical people to the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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