12 September 2023
Founded in 2013, Project Isizwe is a non-profit organisation committed to enabling sustainable free internet access in low-income communities across South Africa.
Project Isizwe’s pilot and award-winning flagship project, Tshwane Free WiFi, was designed to connect the unconnected in South Africa’s capital city. The project deployed 1,050 free public WiFi hotspots across the City of Tshwane, with 600,000 monthly users receiving 500Mb per day. If the project had been subscription funded, it would have cost under R10 per user per month with each user receiving 500Mb a day. It remains the biggest free public WiFi network in Africa and was implemented in partnership with the local municipality, hailed as the most innovative government program to bridge the digital divide.
Enabled by blockchain technology, Project Isizwe provides transparent and traceable transactions, to ensure credibility between contributing donors and beneficiaries who are connected to fast, reliable, and quality internet for free.
Facebook cancels Express Wi-Fi
Project Isizwe was initially using a solution from Facebook parent company Meta - the Express Wi-Fi project. This initiative was launched in 2016 to provide affordable or free WiFi in different parts of the world. In 2020, Facebook cancelled Express Wi-Fi in South Africa, followed by complete cancellation of the project shortly after, as the company looked to focus on metaverse projects.
Thus, Project Isizwe started to examine alternative solutions to maintain its initiative and goals. The key aspects that drove the decision to choose Splynx were its commitment to custom-building the required functionality and the affordable pricing model.
Switching to a different platform required some changes to business processes. As a team of nine, Project Isizwe looked for a transition with minor modifications to their workflow. The team has used the opportunity to review and improve some of their processes, including how to streamline the onboarding of new customers.
The Splynx solution
After reviewing all the requirements defined by Project Isizwe, the Splynx team decided to completely redesign the existing hotspot functionality. Project Isizwe shared their experience and best practices that helped Splynx develop a completely new module that was able to meet both Project Isizwe’s needs as well as market requirements to run a successful hotspot business.
With the new solution, routers can be connected and configured to easily create or manage any desired hotspot bundle. Besides service price and internet speed, easy customisation allows setting desired limitations like validity, online time, traffic limit, or usage limit directly in the corresponding tariff plan settings. The updated customer workflow runs as follows:
Step 1: Customer signs in/registers with a phone number via branded page
Step 2: OTP verification
Step 3: The customer selects the desired plan
Step 4: The customer makes payment and gains access to the internet
Most of the users remain predominantly in cash-based economies and purchase their services using cash. The credit mechanism on VulaCoin enables users to top up their balance with cash, and resellers pay upfront using other payment methods. Splynx integrates with VulaCoin enabling payments via VulaCoin credit, Visa/Mastercard bank cards, 1ForYou Vouchers, and directly via a user’s bank account.
“Project Isizwe’s transition to Splynx as our radius server has been both the right business decision and a positive experience,” said Tim Genders, commercial director, Project Isizwe. “Working alongside and in collaboration with the Splynx team to develop a customised technical solution that meets our users’ needs while enhancing our service and product offering has enabled a sound working relationship between Project Isizwe and Splynx. The personalised service and the ongoing support and engagement that we receive to improve how we serve our customers gives us the confidence in a long-term partnership to ensure we continue towards connecting Africans to free and affordable internet.”
“Our partnership with Project Isizwe is a prime example of how the private and non-profit sectors can work together to address social issues and make a positive impact in society. By working together, we discovered the impact we can make on the lives of people living in low-income communities and how we can contribute to a more connected and fair society,” said Alex Vishnyakov, CEO and co-founder of Splynx.
