Cape Town – Public Wi-Fi is growing in South Africa, despite radically different implementation strategies.
In Cape Town, policy is aimed at ensuring that the city owns the infrastructure while in Tshwane, the speed of roll-out is dependent on a “rental agreement”.
- 206 hotspots
- 100MB free data allocation
- 30Mbps connection speed per user
- 608 000 unique users registered
- R10m annual budget
In Cape Town, officials have highlighted the need to own the deployment infrastructure.
“It is clear that the city’s chosen approach to enabling access to telecommunications services and the internet is financially sustainable for the long term and is not dependent on the survival of private sector organisations,” councillor Xanthea Limberg said in a statement.
- 780 hotspots
- 500MB free data allocation
- 15Mbps average connection speed
- 1.6 million users, 80 000 devices per day
- R180m annual budget
Tshwane has partnered with non-governmental organisation Project Isizwe to deploy its Wi-Fi programme.
“Not only does Tshwane offer free Wi-Fi, but it also provides local uncapped video on demand: Wi-Fi TV - local news stories produced by local journalists,” Alan Knott-Craig jnr head of Project Isizwe told Fin24.
Mobile networks in South Africa are constrained in the rollout of high speed networks by the lack of appropriate spectrum.
READ: Vodacom and MTN want action on spectrum
Wi-Fi, which operates in an unlicensed spectrum, has emerged as a convenient stop-gap for mobile broadband connectivity.
“Wi-Fi is a transformative technology that makes life convenient for some, but it is also the only affordable, high-performance broadband access technology for many South Africans,” said the Wireless Access Providers Association.
“The association, representing over 220 operators of Wi-Fi networks and technology companies, calls for government in SA to officially recognise Wi-Fi technology as ‘the third pillar’ of a national broadband strategy, as articulated in the National Broadband Policy,” Wapa added.
SA has a self-imposed deadline of 2020 for universal mobile broadband access and Wi-Fi is often used to facilitate internet connectivity at lower cost than comparable mobile networks.
“The more important application in a national context is the so-called ‘point to point’ or ‘point to multipoint’ Wi-Fi, as a low cost, reliable and high-performance last-mile or backhaul link. This is what most Wapa members use it for, to connect a home, school or small business to a base station located on a high-site over many kilometres,” said Wapa chair Tim Genders.
Tshwane and Cape Town may be the current leaders in the race to deploy Wi-Fi but the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality in 2015 launched an ambitious programme to connect 695 buildings.
Project Isizwe has also been given the mandate to replicate its Tshwane model in Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and Mangaung.
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter to us who deploys free Wi-Fi, it only matters that it happens. The future of our country depends on unfettered and equal access to information,” said Knott-Craig.
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Calm seas, greedy smugglers: Italy saves over 6 000 migrants
Rome - An Italian prosecutor claims charity boats rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean are in direct contact with people traffickers in Libya, reigniting a bitter row over what the aid groups defend as vital, life-saving operations.
In an interview with Italian daily La Stampa, Sicily-based prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro made his most specific claims yet over NGO activities off Libya, which the EU border agency Frontex recently described as tantamount to providing a "taxi" service to Europe.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) active in the rescue effort include long-established groups such as Doctors without Borders and Save the Children, and smaller, newer operations such as the Malta-based MOAS.
They have all dismissed suggestions of de facto collusion with traffickers as a baseless slur on volunteer crews whose only mission is to save lives in the absence of EU governments acting effectively to do so.
Over 1 000 migrants are feared to have died in waters between Libya and Italy so far this year, according to the UN refugee agency. Nearly 37 000 have been rescued and brought to Italy.
Smear campaign
"We have evidence that there are direct contacts between certain NGOs and people traffickers in Libya," Zuccaro was quoted as saying by La Stampa.
"We do not yet know if and how we could use this evidence in court, but we are quite certain about what we say: Telephone calls from Libya to certain NGOs, lamps that illuminate the route to these organisations' boats, boats that suddenly turn off their [locating] transponders, are ascertained facts."
Zuccaro is the head of a five-strong pool of prosecutors in charge of investigating all the legal aspects of the migrant crisis, from trafficking to illegal exploitation of migrant labour on Italian farms and rackets in the provision of reception facilities.
La Stampa reported that prosecutors were looking into whether some of the newly-established NGOs involved in rescue operations may be financed by the traffickers themselves as a way of making it easier to guarantee their human cargoes would get to Italy.
The organisations involved have all dismissed the charges against them and expressed concern that they are being targeted by an orchestrated smear campaign.
One group, SOS Mediterranee, said last week it had "never, not once" been put in touch with a migrant boat via smugglers.
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