Tshwane Mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa has announced that the city will ramp up its free Wi-Fi initiative by deploying a further 1,848 sites over the next 18 months.<\/p>\n
In his state of the capital address this week, the mayor said that despite ‘unprecedented successes’ in delivering Wi-Fi, only 14.7% of the city’s citizens are currently within walking\u00a0 distance of a site.<\/p>\n
“Over the next 18 months, Tshwane will deploy a further 1,848 sites, from Bronkhorstspruit to Hammanskraal, to Soshanguve, to Centurion and indeed, to the rest of Tshwane; thus ensuring that by the end of 2016, every single citizen of Tshwane is within walking distance of free Wi-Fi.”<\/p>\n
“The City\u2019s vision is to eventually provide free Wi-Fi connectivity in every street, every corner\u00a0 and to every household in the Capital City,” the mayor said.<\/p>\n
Ramokgopa noted that in November 2013, the City of Tshwane successfully deployed\u00a0 phase 1 of the Tshwane free Wi-Fi\u00a0 network, beginning with a capacity of 25,000 users spread across five locations in Soshanguve, Mamelodi and Atteridgeville.<\/p>\n
He said that the digital project boasts a current capacity able to serve over two million users across 575 sites, with a further 50 sites to be deployed by the end\u00a0 of the current financial\u00a0 year.<\/p>\n
“In 2014, the average growth rate of usage was greater than 40 percent per month with an astounding growth rate of almost 185% between June and July of 2014 alone.<\/p>\n
“We currently have coverage across all seven regions of Tshwane with at least one free Wi-Fi site in 96 wards. In addition, there are over 560,000 unique devices or users registered and almost 15 million total sessions have been logged thus far,” the mayor said.<\/p>\n
In 2015 alone, there is an average usage of 152,000 users per month, representing a growth rate of approximately 279%, in comparison to the last calendar year, he added.<\/p>\n
Tshwane launched Wi-Fi TV in November 2014 and in first five months since its launch, it has had over six million views.<\/p>\n
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