A much-hyped project to bring wi-fi access to minibus taxis and taxi ranks has crashed.
The project was launched two years ago by the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) - but nothing has happened so far.
This week Santaco secretary-general Vernon Billet admitted the taxi council had been struggling to get hold of Wi-Taxi, the private company they mandated to roll out the project that would have seen 1 500 taxis and 50 taxi ranks around the country have access to free limited wi-fi connection within six months of the launch in June 2014.
The post-2014-phase should have seen the rollout of 4 000 to 5 000 wi-fi access points installed monthly, with download speeds of 2 megabytes per second and an upload speed of 1 megabyte per second.
“I have not been able to get hold of Brian Mdluli, chief executive of Wi-Taxi, for some time and we are not certain what is happening with the project,” said Billet.
Mdluli was not difficult to get hold of, and insisted that the project is still under way.
“Santaco is operationally involved in Wi-Taxi and we have a partnership that is firmly focused on servicing the commuter market.
“Over 1 000 installations have been done to date and we have over 3 000 requests for installations from the end of December.
“The new requests will be carried out with the new, improved, locally assembled devices… the beta equipment had limited functionality and we relied a lot on the taxi drivers to keep the units connected. The Wi-Taxi 2.0 equipment will be hard-wired into the vehicle and will remain active at all times,” Mdluli said.
Wi-Taxi is funded by the Gauteng Enterprise Propeller, a provincial government agency established in 2005 under the auspices of the Department of Economic Development and its shareholders.
Mdluli insisted they are making progress but said: “We require additional time to reach our milestones.
“We are wary not to put ourselves under undue pressure because of the importance of this project.”
Billet, however, said the details about the project remained sketchy and the organisational communication between the taxi council and Wi-Taxi had failed.
He said the rollout of wi-fi hotspots on board taxis and at taxi ranks throughout the country is intended to see 90 percent of all Santaco’s taxis and ranks fitted with wi-fi access by 2017.
Santaco said the project is aimed at keeping their 15 million daily commuters and attracting more people back to using public transport and taxis in particular.
Saturday Star