Awesome initiative!

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Free Wi-Fi for Stellenbosch
February 21, 2012

Stellenbosch is set to provide everyone with free Wi-Fi Internet access by mid-2012

Stellenbosch is planning to provide free Wi-Fi Internet access to everyone in the town. This is according to Stellenbosch mayor Conrad Sidego.

Sidego said that they are planning to make Stellenbosch a Wi-Fi town– an initiative by Stellenbosch, Mxit and the University of Stellenbosch.

The service will be offered free of charge to anyone, and no registration for the service will be needed.

Large downloads will be prohibited, but all other services (like web surfing, messaging and VoIP services) will be supported.

Stellenbosch councillor and head of the municipality’s finance portfolio, Pieter Venter, explained that the trial network will go live on Friday (24 February).

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.

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.

The fast six-month rollout period may surprise people, but 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).

All that needs to be done now it to put repeaters closer to residents to “fill in” the network and boost coverage. These repeaters will be put on lamp poles and on suitable high sites.

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.

Mxit CEO Alan Knott-Craig Jr. said that they are assisting with the Wi-Fi project at the request of the mayor.

“We 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,” said Knott-Craig.

“Our primary value-add is the unused bandwidth coming into our data centre (770 million messages a day requires a fair amount of capacity),” said Knott-Craig.

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.

Venter highlighted that they do not want to compete against paid-for broadband services like ADSL or 3G, and is therefore limiting the service to 1Mbps and a 500MB daily usage cap.

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.

Source: MyBroadband (http://mybroadband.co.za/news/broadband/43829-free-wi-fi-for-stellenbosch.html)

now THAT is the way to make things seem attractive.....

It really is amazing the direction this province is moving in. :banana:

With the provincial government announcing the high-speed connectivity aim of 70% penetration by 2014, the Western Cape is really taking steps to become a knowledge economy. This is exactly how S. Korea went from being developing a few decades ago, to fully developed today.

If we can keep this up, along with a better education system, the W.Cape could be classified as developed in 2 decades.

Keep it up!!! :)

Actually heard Helen on a radio add today, she basically said:

The Western Cape way is this:

It's our responsibility to provide you with access to good education; it's your responsibility to study hard and to excel.
It's our responsibility to provide you with access to good roads; it's your responsibility to obey the rules and don't speed or drink and drive.
It's our responsibility to provide you with access to a thriving economy; it's your responsibility to take advantage of opportunities and work hard.
It's our responsibility to provide you with access to quality health care; it's your responsibility to live a healthy lifestyle and not engage in unprotected sex.

Nice departure from the rhetoric that promotes entitlement. With high-tech initiatives like this, I hope more prosperity comes to the people of the Cape. Even the previously-Coloured community, Pniel, getting wi-fi for free... this could be a game changer for that community that recently underwent significant urban and infrastructure upgrades.

That is precisely how I want this country to run....

Rather than just giving everything, provide the tools for people to make something of themselves, and then they must pull finger and make it happen.

very good initiative!

if you dont need to register.. how will they cap the service?

Probably using the user's IP address signature?

if you dont need to register.. how will they cap the service?

Likely by associating a daily cap with the user's MAC address, and blocking access from said MAC address for the rest of the day once said cap has been reached.

More than likely a combination of MAC and some other factor...

Cos hells bells if its a MAC based cap.. i'd have a field day :D

More than likely a combination of MAC and some other factor...

Cos hells bells if its a MAC based cap.. i'd have a field day :D

Yeah they're going to have to be very careful, because all it'd take to get around that would be MAC address spoofing and people would be home free :nuts:

If you could propose such to ANC (or IFP) mayors they can go "wi-fi, what's that?"

"IFP Mayor" ... what's that?

:lol:

So the trial network was supposed to go live yesterday. Has anyone had the opportunity to test it out yet?

Well, according to MyBroadband it was up and running on Friday, and speedtest.net tests are giving the following results:

I was there just now and did a couple of speedtests from my phone when I was in town. Parked about 20 meters from the pole.

I noticed the ISP on the speedtest.net app was WebAfrica at first :

Results :

DL - 749kbps ; UL - 159kbps ; ping - 59ms
DL - 356kbps ; UL - 308kbps ; ping - 55ms
DL - 76kbps ; UL - 2152kbps ; ping - 64ms (don't know what happened here)

The ISP then changed to Telkom (SAIX) - not sure if I went out of the app and back in or something. The following results :

DL - 2953kbps ; UL - 2786kbps ; ping - 28ms
DL - 4502kbps ; UL - 4331kbps ; ping - 29ms

Overall it's looking very promising! I look forward to them stabilising the service and achieving blanketed coverage :cheers:

Tests yesterday are netting the following extremely promising results:

http://www.digitalpilgrim.co.za/.a/6a00d8341c5bcf53ef01630219e70c970d-580wi

Source: Hitting the Wire (http://www.hittingthewire.co.za/2012/02/stellenbosch-free-wifi-first-taste-of-the-pilot.html)

Free municipal Wi-Fi in Stellenbosch has now been rolled out in the town centre and the footprint is about to be expanded to include previously-disadvantaged areas of Kayamandi, Idas Valley and Cloetesville.

The Stellenbosch Municipality stated that farming areas would be rolled out thereafter and the entire Stellenbosch was to be covered by year's end. They want to position the town as a Silicon Valley-type technology hub for the Cape.

:banana:

^^Very good initiative, I do think that area of the country is poised to be on some silicon valley tip. You have the Maties, Mxit, you have Sunspace there and a host of other tech companies. Good...

Capitec Bank's headquarters as well :D

Free Stellenbosch WiFi second phase now live
February 4, 2013

The second phase of the Free Stellenbosch WiFi project went live last week, giving free Internet to more people

The second phase of the Free Stellenbosch WiFi project went live recently, which extends coverage to Ida’s Valley, Kayamandi, and Cloetesville.

In February 2012 Stellenbosch mayor Conrad Sidego revealed that they are planning to make Stellenbosch a WiFi town. This is an initiative backed by Stellenbosch, Mxit and the University of Stellenbosch.

After a slow start and a few problems, the free Stellenbosch WiFi project is gaining momentum with additional resources which allows the network to “seriously extend our reach”.

Despite recent changes at Mxit, the mobile company is still involved as a bandwidth supplier. Some retrenched Mxit staff members are volunteering on this project.

“It truly is passion-driven, and an indication of how keen we are as a community in assisting in closing the digital gap,” said the project’s Carinus Lemmer.

Source: MyBroadband (http://mybroadband.co.za/news/wireless/69452-free-stellenbosch-wifi-second-phase-now-live.html)