Faizel Patel – 14/09/2020
The City of Johannesburg has relaunched the free Joburg Wi-Fi Hotspots roll-out after it took a backseat for the past four years under the previous administration.
Budgeted at R 45 million for the current financial year the city says the Wi-Fi connectivity rollout is primarily designed to bridge the digital divide.
Initiated in 2012, the City of Johannesburg says it identified key Smart City outcome priorities that included turning the municipality into a technologically competent institution, a smart city with enhanced service efficiencies and productivity, provision of municipal services to households utilising broadband infrastructure & job creation through an improved economic development environment.
Programme Director Lwazilwaphesheya Khoza says the resumption of a large-scale roll-out of the Joburg Free Wi-Fi Hotspots across the city is to give residents free access to online municipal services, economic opportunities, and academic materials, especially for young people.
“As things stand, there are already 84 active Joburg Free Wi-Fi Hotspots across the City – ranging from the Braamfontein Precinct to some of our municipal customer service centres across the City’s regions A to G. All the Joburg Free Wi-Fi Hotspots run on solar power, and are manned by the City’s broadband network company, the Metropolitan Trading Company (MTC).”
The free Joburg Wi-Fi Hotspots which currently offer 500MB of data per day per device with download speeds of at 5MBps are already being accessed by up to 6 000 devices.
0 Comments