Commercial Wi-Fi services launched in South Africa, such as those from Telkom, Mweb, and VAST Networks, ultimately fail, primarily due to improved mobile data speeds and missed opportunities.

MyBroadband spoke to Vox Telecoms’ Wi-Fi product manager, Craig Blignaut, to find out why such services failed.

Blignaut explained that providers don’t necessarily monitor and update their services as well as they should and that improvements to mobile data services have made them affordable and often faster than commercial Wi-Fi services.

“The cost and reach of mobile data has become more affordable, steering users away from public Wi-Fi networks that are limited to a specific area and remain costly,” Blignaut said.

“Users use their mobile phone data as ‘hotspot’ rather than going through a tedious process of registering on a public Wi-Fi provider site.”

Blignaut said although free Wi-Fi appeals to consumers in South Africa, it often doesn’t work well or is difficult to access.

“People want free Wi-Fi that works well and easily, which is not always the case with commercial Wi-Fi offerings,” he said.

“If these services are not managed and serviced correctly, they may not be working properly or efficiently, therefore, causing frustration and wasting time for users.”

“Too many questions and details are often requested, and so many times it’s simply easier to use mobile data,” he added.

Blignaut also said that commercial Wi-Fi providers didn’t make the best use of the information users supply when connecting to the service.

“Valuable information captured, which could be used for reporting and marketing, is not utilised to the full extent,” he said.

“This leads to the Wi-Fi service being a pure cost and not generating revenue as it could be.”

However, it should be noted that there are scenarios where public Wi-Fi services have worked, such as small-scale networks in restaurants and coffee shops.

MyBroadband tested the Wi-Fi services offered at several coffee shops in Centurion and found that Starbucks’ network could achieve speeds of over 94Mbps.

At the same time, Mugg & Bean’s, Wimpy’s, and Seattle Coffee Co.’s services struggled to achieve speeds higher than 3Mbps.

Telkom mobile launched its commercial Wi-Fi services in August 2013, offering all consumers 60 minutes of free unlimited Wi-Fi daily at over 1,500 active hotspots across the country.

MyBroadband tested Telkom’s free Wi-Fi offering in September 2013 and found it very unstable, with latency ranging from 39 to 211 milliseconds.

This is detrimental to commercial Wi-Fi services, as Blignaut explained that consumers would likely only try the service once.

“Consumers will most likely try the service once. If it works — great. If not, it’s very unlikely that they will try a second time,” he said.

Mweb announced its intentions to launch Wi-Fi services at shopping malls, hotels, hospitals, transport hubs and restaurants across the country in December 2013.

At the same time, it launched a promotional offering of two months of free uncapped Wi-Fi at one of its sites in Canal Walk shopping centre, Cape Town.

However, only two years later, the Internet service provider announced that it was shutting down its commercial Wi-Fi service.

VAST Networks came to be through a joint venture between Naspers and Dimension Data in 2017.

The deal came to fruition after Dimension Data-owned Internet Solutions refused to sell AlwaysOn to Naspers.

VAST Networks told MyBroadband it would shut down its commercial Wi-Fi services in October 2019 after months of trying to sell the company.

Think Wi-Fi launched its commercial service in partnership with Google in 2019 and while the search giant abandoned its free Wi-Fi project in 2020, Think Wi-Fi has continued to grow its network.

Think Wi-Fi took the project over from its partner with intentions to rebrand and expand its service.

MyBroadband tested the free service offered by Think Wi-Fi and found that speeds had improved significantly since we originally tested the Google Station hotspots.

Our testing recorded a latency of 27 milliseconds, and download and upload speeds of over 10Mbps and 8Mbps, respectively.

The South African government has launched several free Wi-Fi services in cities around the country, including Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Cape Town.

The latest — a 500MB free Wi-Fi offering for residents of the City of Johannesburg — launched in February 2020, after its rollout took a backseat following its announcement in August 2016.

Craig Blignaut Headline MWEB Wi-Fi Telkom Wi-Fi VAST Networks Vivica Vox Telecoms

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