AKC’s Isizwe’s township Wi-Fi offering flooded after yesterday’s switch on – Youtube, education favourites
In the Knott-Craig family the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Where his father revolutionised SA's communications industry through the building of Vodacom, Alan Junior is doing something similar to deliver free internet access to the bottom of the pyramid. His Isizwe's township wi-fi offering which switched on in Tshwane yesterday. It was a roaring success – 600 000 unique users in a day with some using up their 350MB cap in a matter of minutes. As Alan Knott-Craig Jnr explained during our interview today, all the "marketing" has been viral. Web access has the potential to transform education by truly empowering those who have not had access to the infinite knowledge resources available online. News of his son's success is sure to be a tonic for Alan Snr, Cell-C's CEO who is in hospital recovering from the stroke suffered nine days ago. – AH
GUGULETHU MFUPHI: Tshwane's free Wi-Fi project has started to gain traction and according to Alan Knott-Craig Jnr from Isizwe, there is no reason why this project cannot be replicated throughout South Africa – and the rest of the continent. Alan Knott-Craig Jnr joins us now. He is the Founder and Chief Executive of Isizwe. Your dad's actually the Chief Executive of Cell C. Alan, looking at this project you started, free Wi-Fi in Tshwane, no doubt a first for SA and it could potentially be a first for Africa as a whole, once you expand in those markets.
ALAN KNOTT-CRAIG JNR: Yes – absolutely, I'm pretty sure one or two other places in Africa probably do something similar, but the model itself is pretty unique as far as I'm concerned.
GUGULETHU MFUPHI: You mentioned that you're keen on making probably a copy and paste action regarding this and moving into other African markets. Where would you target first?
ALAN KNOTT-CRAIG JNR: I'd start close to home, places like Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Zambia – those places are kind of the easiest to go with. However, the whole model is set up in such a way that you shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel every time. You should just take a cookie cutter and replicate.
GUGULETHU MFUPHI: Just on that Alan, what are the procedures involved: municipal authorisations, as well as ensuring that there is enough infrastructure available?
ALAN KNOTT-CRAIG JNR: Well, obviously there is a place to play in the South African context. What we've managed to do is work under the provisions of the Municipal Finance Management Act that allow the council to issue grants. So we, as a public organisation, are issued a grant. The money is then used over three years to provide free Wi-Fi for areas specified on the contract. It doesn't matter where you go on our continent. Everyone has a different law system so you don't have to figure that out. In terms of the infrastructure, Tshwane is as good as you're going to get as a city council. They have a lot of fibre, many buildings, and really good skills, and obviously, when you're maybe sitting in the middle of the continent, there might be less bandwidth and less fibre, but everything is doable. It's a question of cost. Tshwane is as affordable as you're ever going to get – further north you're going to add a little bit more.
ALEC HOGG: Alan, when you were here in August you said to us that you're kicking off with five sites and that there would be 25 000 people switching on. What kind of traction has the project gotten so far?
ALAN KNOTT-CRAIG JNR: Well, it switched on yesterday. We switched on at Tshwane University Soshanguve, Mamelodi, Atteridgeville, and Church Square. We haven't told anybody about it. The only people that have heard, are people who will watch CNBC right now and read a couple of websites. We've already had places like Soshanguve do over 600 thousand and couple of people hit their caps within five minutes, and that 350mb cap is a pretty big cap, so there's definitely a lot of hunger and need out there. What we found is that you don't have to tell anybody about it. People find out by themselves, word of mouth spreads, and you know the network is loaded.
ALEC HOGG: No doubt, social media has helped, too.
ALAN KNOTT-CRAIG JNR: Well, you have to be on the internet to see social media, so I think it's the good old bush telegraph. Word of mouth is what starts the word getting out.
ALEC HOGG: That's incredible: 350mb in five minutes. What the heck were they downloading?
ALAN KNOTT-CRAIG JNR: Well, it's not normal stuff because there are restrictions on it. You can't go to certain types of sites and you can't just download as many movies as you'd like, but for the most part people seem to be going to YouTube. They listen to music videos. There's quite a lot of educational stuff. Funnily enough, the most visited educational site is the City of Tshwane's own educational website, so I think students in Tshwane are using it to do their assignments, etcetera.
ALEC HOGG: Alan, this has the potential to turn a lot of thinking on its head. I was in KZN yesterday and a lot of the talk was 'our people aren't educated, they haven't been given an opportunity, and so it's going to take generations to fix'. If we have 600 thousand people jumping onto this network, the internet has the ability to revolutionise things. People have to start thinking differently.
ALAN KNOTT-CRAIG JNR: I've seen that myself, with my kids. I think to myself 'how am I going to teach them how to do this or that?' When I gave them an iPad, I learned that kids would figure everything out by themselves. You must just get out of their way. They just need the devices, but the devices are in everybody's hands already. There are many phones out there that can get onto Wi-Fi internet. The missing ingredient is the connectivity and you're not going to be able to get affordable connectivity over 3G networks It is what it is, so Wi-Fi was the way to do that. If you want everyone to be able to get onto it, especially the people who need it the most, it has to be subsidised by the government. This Wi-Fi network model was built around that and I don't think you have to train anybody to do it. I promise you; when you give the people the connectivity, they're on it, and they're running.
ALEC HOGG: Alan, just to close off with, your dad is very well known in the business community. There was news that he had a stroke. How is he doing?
ALAN KNOTT-CRAIG JNR: He's doing a lot better. Thanks a lot, Alec.
ALEC HOGG: When you say 'a lot better', what does it mean?
ALAN KNOTT-CRAIG JNR: It means he's doing a lot better than he was nine days ago, but I can't say much more than that.