Pretoria - The future of the capital’s free wi-fi service hangs in the balance as the service provider claims not to have been paid, warning of disconnections across the city.
Project Isizwe says the city’s free wi-fi users could be in for a big surprise on June 1, when certain areas may be cut off over the lack of funds, adding it was already forced to run services in some areas at its own cost.
Details about the worrying state of the wi-fi service are set out in a report the Pretoria News has seen, that sought to assess the viability of the service and the cost attached to it.
Project Isizwe said if no solution was found by the end of this month some hotspots would have to be switched off.
“Project Isizwe has the cash to maintain the network at current levels until May 31. From June 1, free internet zones that are out of contract will need to be switched off and the full network will operate on contractual obligations,” the report said.
It was compiled in light of the contract between the city and Isizwe which expires on December 3 this year.
The report noted that if the city failed to find solutions by the end of this month, performance levels of the wi-fi could be direly affected.
For example, the wi-fi speed would be reduced from 15Mbps to 1Mbps per user, which “will be seen as not working”, the report said. In addition, data would be reduced from 500MB per day per device to 250MB.
Wi-Fi hotspots likely to be affected from June 1 are Church Square, Tshwane North College, University of Pretoria, Mamelodi community centre and Soshanguve TUT campuses.
The report said a number of free internet zones had expired and Project Isizwe was running the service at its own cost.
Executive mayor Solly Msimanga told the Pretoria News that the contract was muddied in terms of how it was scheduled.
“They initially scheduled it in phases. So you would realise that when it ends, it ends in phases."
“We are trying to negotiate that all the contracts end at the same time without all the interruptions that are to be experienced if the wi-fi were to be stopped,” Msimanga said.
The city was not planning on cutting off the free wi-fi, also known as TshWi-Fi, Msimanga said. “It is a matter of how we begin to ensure that as we roll it out we are not found wanting by the Auditor-General,” Msimanga said.
A three-men team of two MMCs and the deputy city manager were hard at work, negotiating with Project Isizwe to come up with solutions that would prevent the wi-fi interruptions.
He declined to go into the details of what Project Isizwe demanded and what the city wanted.
“When you are negotiating a contract that is as complicated as the one we find ourselves in, there are people who are trying to advantage themselves to your disadvantage.
“It is a matter of compromise that needs to be the founding order for the service to continue,” he said.
According to the report, a solution to fund the network at current performance levels needed to be found by the end of May to prevent internet disconnection.
The cost of the network at current performance levels is R3.5million per month.
Project Isizwe owns the equipment on the high sites and about 18km of fibre run to link the zones to the internet.
In the light of the expiry of its contract in December, the report requested approval for the city to negotiate with Project Isizwe to outright purchase the equipment, valued at R24m.
The equipment would enable the city to render the service even after Project Isizwe contract had expired.
“The negotiation needs to be concluded and paid during May for the network to continue at current performance levels,” the report said.
The report recommended that the contract with Project Isizwe be amended to allow the expiry date for free internet to all venues to be on December 3, 2017.
It also recommended that funding be found to run the network at current performance levels and not from contractual obligations from June 2017.
Msimanga told the council last week during the tabling of the city budget that TshWi-Fi was among the good projects inherited by the DA-led administration from the previous ANC regime.
He quashed claims that the service would be ended during the DA’s term of office and said funding for TshWi-Fi would come from the operational budget.
“We haven’t gone into the budget as to what is going to be allocated to what,” he said.
Regarding the sustainability of wi-fi, Msimanga said he had proposed the route of commercialising some aspects of it by selling the advertising space in order to generate revenue.
“I have given my team a task to look into alternatives in terms of how we begin to fund this, and funding it much better in terms of the availability of the hotspots that are out there,” he said. The city also wanted to expand wi-fi to areas that didn’t have the service.