SA town, Stellenbosch, to get Wi-Fi cloud

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February 22nd, 2012
       16 comments

The town of Stellenbosch

Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa, is set to get a Wi-Fi cloud in the next six months. According to a report in South African tech news site MyBroadband, The Wi-Fi will be available free of charge to anyone, and users of the service will not be required to register.

The free Wi-Fi network is an initiative by Stellenbosch, MXit (the messaging service and social network that’s more popular than Facebook in South Africa) and the University of Stellenbosch. According to the report, the availability of unused bandwidth at MXit has made the project possible. The town authorities say that the MXit bandwidth will be sufficient for now but that eventually they hope the University of Stellenbosch and SEACOM will assist with more bandwidth.

The roll out of the network will start this Friday on a trial run that will just cover as the town center and over a period a 6 months, will be extended over the whole town.

Pieter Venter, a Stellenbosch councilor has explained that in order to not compete with paid-for broadband services like ADSL or 3G, the municipality is going to limit the service to 1Mbps and a 500MB daily usage cap. Usage will also be limited to web browsing, video viewing and VoIP. Heavy downloads will not be allowed.

image credit: Andres de Wet

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  • Joe Black

    Yho!!! (that’s all I can say)

  • ic0n1c

    Packing my things first thing tomorrow and going to 
    Stellenbosch (sounds like an Afrikaans town though…) free internet, 500Mb per day… thats $50 econet money!!!

  • Anonymous

    We should go to SA and bring this Stellenbosch town to Zim… timbonakigwewo

  • http://twitter.com/cshoko concern

    Why do i smell some selfish guys approaching the Competition Tribunal…..cse this gonna kick them out of business. 500MB…..gosh!!! When is it coming to Joburg???

  • WinstonD

    Lucky bastards !

  • Pruwocha

    An POTRAZ outlaws WiFi in Zim! It’s sickening, but Zimbos also accept this technological suicide. 

  • Top_one_wacho

    these guys have it great. This stuff is good for innovators. smart kids trying out stuff and creating tomorrow.

  • Magneto

    Reminds me of what Meraki did in Mountain View, USA with Google… The Stellenbosch project is to be applauded. @0dd1ca2ad11e6f9b5c087872511833c5:disqus  Potraz does not  ”outlaw” WiFi per se but it tries to govern the use of frequencies to avoid interference. WiFi frequency (2.4Ghz) is a free band meaning you don’t need to have a license and/or to pay for it to use it. Obviously Potraz is more interested in protecting licensed frequencies which it is paid for by licensed providers. WiFi deployments are usually frowned upon in cities where interference is a major concern.  

  • Robert Dondo

    lucky bast*rds!

  • http://twitter.com/dagelf Coenraad Loubser

    This is great – but they should work with the local service providers and provide the bandwidth to them if they really want to provide a service that is worth rendering.

  • Countach

    Stellenbosch here i come 

  • DuwayneGoddard

    at what speeds though?, its like the idiots here that were offering unlimited internet at 10bit/sec for $50
    Pointless if you can’t even open gmail.

  • jurunaj

    yes yes yes, internet access been travelling from more berable, less expensive, cheaper and now its practically free in some town next door to us. Hope it becomes totly free whilst im still alive kikiki, the way of technology people.

  • http://twitter.com/KuraiMGT KuraiMGT

    Wish I could swap DZ for Stellenbosch

  • Petros Ruwocha

     If POTRAZ do not allow WIFI connectivity across roads or buildings or distances greater than 100 metres, then it’s outlawing WIFI. There was similar legislation in RSA about 10 years ago, but that’s all history and an industry self-regulating body, WAPA, is there to assist regulatory authorities with licensing issues etc. But POTRAZ does NOT allow last-mile connectivity using WIFI, or correct me if I am wrong.

  • Nerudo

     Frequencies are still restricted here in SA and everywere across the world, Magneto is partly right although I cant confirm POTRAZ is in support t innovation somehow