Last year the City of Tshwane together with Project Isizwe, a non-governmental organisation, launched the free Wi-Fi network as part of the City’s vision of providing universal access and connectivity. The project has made the city one of the largest free Wi-Fi providers in South Africa.
Project Isizwe has just released the numbers for phase one of the project looking at the period December 2013 to July 2014 period last month, which coincided with the launch of the project’s second phase. The second phase will see 213 free Wi-Fi internet zones rolled out at schools in Mamelodi, Atteridgeville and Soshanguve.
According to Project Isizwe, most users who accessed the 250Mb per day of free browsing did so on their mobile phones, followed by PC users and tablets. The total number of sessions since the start of the project is 796 489 with 85 833 unique users accessing the service; the average speed is 7 Mbps.
The project has seen a seeing an increase in the number of online interactions including average daily uploads and downloads with July 2014 experiencing the most interactions. The average number of users also increased, from under 1 000 in the first month of the project to just above 3 000 in July.
Most users are on social media platforms – 84% of users have Facebook accounts, while Twitter stands at 55%.
Phase three of the project is planned to start in August 2014, comprising 400 sites and capacity for a further two million users with special emphasis on healthcare facilities throughout its low-income communities.
