Durban’s Florida Road has become the first of many urban streets to be lit up by super-fast WiFi. “Florida Road is a great place to demonstrate the possibilities that high-speed WiFi enables,” says Nathier Kasu, general manager at MWEB WiFi. “We’ve created a WiFi zone, rather than a WiFi hotspot, to deliver a superior experience to users, wherever they may be on the high street.”
WiFi hotspots, he says, tend to be single access points, with limited capacity and scalability as new users join the network, and a poorer overall performance. By contrast, a WiFi zone features multiple access points, meshed together in a single indoor or outdoor environment with more resilient infrastructure and powerful backhaul – with the result being consistent, fast internet access.
“Our vision here is to augment the real-world experiences of restaurants, coffee shops, and hotels, with a digital experience that allows people to connect more, stream more, capture more and, simply, do more,” Kasu says, adding that as part of the broader Naspers Group, the MWEB WiFi zones set to spring up around the country will be perfectly suited to carrying broadcast content such as video-on-demand and mobile TV.
“Because the service is free we have started seeing Durban’s small business owners spending more and more time working and having meetings in the Florida Road venues – so for the coffee shops and lunch spots, business is booming,” says Kasu.
