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Johannesburg - Inner-city area Braamfontein now has access to free blanket Wi-Fi, according to City of Johannesburg officials.
The network went live on Wednesday and forms part of the City of Joburg’s ‘Smart City’ initiative.
The project targets switching on 1 000 Wi-Fi points across the city by the end of 2015.
Users of the free Wi-Fi in Braamfontein will be able to download 300MB per day per device, said officials
“We see this is as very transformative initiative that will turbo charge Joburg’s digital economy," said Johannesburg Mayor Parks Tau in a statement.
"We have set ourselves an ambitious target to get this going but it is really just the beginning, amazing things are coming and the Smart City is here, this is our vision for a world-class African City”, said Tau.
The city’s Wi-Fi roll-out is expected to happen in planned phases particularly around student corridors, according to the statement.
The city also said that 50% of libraries and clinics across its seven regions have free Wi-Fi.
Other areas set to be connected are regions such as Zandspruit, Diepsloot, Orange Farm, Ivory Park, Pennyville and Lenasia.
Meanwhile, officials further said that Johannesburg’s Wi-Fi efforts are expected to be boosted after it acquired a broadband network.
Earlier this year, city officials in Johannesburg said the municipality is taking over the build of its fibre broadband network project following the cancellation of a contract with Ericsson.
Ericsson was hired in 2011 to build the 900km Johannesburg Broadband Network (JBN) which costs R3.4bn.
The city claimed the project failed to meet its intended switch-on date of July 2013, which in turn led to the cancellation of Ericsson’s contract. Subsequently, the City of Johannesburg approved an amount of R1.1 billion to settle the termination of the contract with Ericsson.
