JUST over 900 wi-fi hotspots are now available to residents of Ekurhuleni since the launch of the free service last week.
Although the official announcement was only made on Thursday last week, the City of Ekurhuleni is well within the first phase of rolling out the wi-fi project. To date, 225 municipal buildings have access to wi-fi and 925 hot spots, where residents and businesses can enjoy free internet access, are available, the metro announced in a statement released earlier this week.
The need for free internet access has been made evident by the 62 901 people who have used the facility to date, of which 2 900 are reported to be reaching the maximum cap of 250 mega bites a day.
“In pursuit of our vision to become the smart, creative and developmental city and in understanding the information technology era we live in, we have made it our business to ensure that our people do not get left behind,” said the executive mayor, Clr Mondli Gungubele, during his address at the launch.
Gungubele further indicated that the wi-fi cap has been put in place as a monitoring tool and once the demand grows, the City is prepared to increase the cap.
The introduction of free wi-fi will be an enhancement to other digital innovations such as the e-siyakhokha tool used by residents to pay for services without leaving the comfort of their homes and e-health services in clinics around Ekurhuleni. The City is also expected to launch a customer relations app in the near future.
Petros Masuku, a part time MTech student, said having free wi-fi at the library was extremely convenient as it assisted him while conducting research.
Where is Kempton Park’s hot spots?
On a list of municipal buildings with free wi-fi in Kempton Park published on the metro’s website, only these local places could be found: Birchleigh Clinic, Birchleigh Library, Bonaero Park Clinic, Bonaero Park Library and Kempton Park EMPD.
Express also looked for a hot spot at our office on Voortrekker Road, but could not find anything.
Express has sent through a query to the metro trying to get more details, which will be published as soon as we have received it.
