The SA National Taxi Council (Santaco) has unveiled details around its free WiFi offering for its 15 million daily taxi commuters.
News of the project - a collaboration between Santaco and Telkom Mobile - emerged earlier this week. Santaco's technology partner Wi-Taxi told ITWeb that a pilot project launched in April had been "successful", and the WiFi initiative was a response to government's plans to improve Internet access for South Africans.
Santaco secretary general Vernon Billet today revealed each commuter would receive 50MB free data per month, "on a WiFi platform with speeds in excess of 3G and long-term evolution".
Billet says, in terms of the proposed rollout strategy, over 90% of all Santaco's taxis and taxi ranks would be covered within three years.
"The rollout will be in phases, with phase one seeing 1 500 taxis [equipped with WiFi] over a period of six months - that is over 50 selected taxi ranks.
"Phase two - and subsequent phases - will see the installation of between 4 000 to 5 000 WiFi access points per month."
Wi-Taxi CEO Brian Mdluli says the taxi WiFi will offer a download speed of 2Mbps and upload speed of 1Mbps.
Cautious optimism
Industry observers have welcomed the move as a step in the right direction in terms of government's Internet ambition.
Africa Analysis Dobek Pater says the success of the project, however, hinges on a number of factors, including the quality of connectivity, commercial model, smartphone penetration among commuters, the practicality of using a device in a taxi, and vandalism or theft of routers.
"I think [this project] can certainly assist with providing better connectivity for the underserviced in particular. It will probably evolve over time, but specifics and real application are important."
Pater points out that a similar initiative - but on a much smaller scale - was started by Safaricom in Kenya some time ago. "Apparently it was more of a marketing stint than anything by the operator, as the service did not work very well in terms of in-taxi equipment deployed and the quality of connectivity/coverage."
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