The City of Tshwane and the non-profit organisation, Project Isizwe, have launched three apps to compliment the City's ambitious publicly-funded free Wi-Fi Service initiative. Wi-Fi Chat, Wi-Fi Voice and Wi-Fi Drive represent an upgrade to the two-year-old service which aims to roll out free internet to 1158 more free internet zones by the end of 2016.

Wi-Fi Chat is a localised network through which residents can contact the municipality and receive feedback and other information in real time. The second application, Wi-Fi Voice, allows users to make free calls between themselves and to the City's customer care line on the free Wi-Fi network and can be downloaded on Android, iOS and Windows operating systems.

City of Tshwane chief information officer Dumisani Otumile told those attending the launch that use of the Wi-Fi Voice application outside a free Wi-Fi site will cost ten cents per minute on average.

"We are starting with one thousand concurrent connections. What it means is you can have one thousand people at any given time talking on the system," he said.

In what Otumile claims to be a world first, the City has also launched a video-on-demand service called Wi-Fi Drive which will run on weekends and will see ten movie new movie titles added every month.

Opportunities for entrepreneurs

Project Isizwe chief executive officer Alan Knott-Craig Jnr says more people are beginning to realise that the free Wi-Fi project is a good idea, despite the initial scepticism that saw the proposal for the project rejected by the City of Cape Town and Stellenbosch.

"What we are doing is enabling a whole new economy, a digital economy. All those entrepreneurs living in Soshanguve will get help with their marketing, to tweet things, start websites, sell things online - they can't do it without the internet and Tshwane makes it possible for them to get onto the internet," said Knott-Craig.

City of Tshwane executive mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa told ITWeb Africa that the free Wi-Fi service and the new applications will allow more people to become participants in the mainstream economy by reducing the cost of communication.

"The key about this is that we have created a platform so that youngsters and other people can make the most of business opportunities."

Ramokgopa said his peers in municipalities around the country and the rest of the continent are now willing to implement free Wi-Fi because the City of Tshwane has shown that it works.

"I guess there is this thing of risk taking. The appetite to take a risk does not exist with others so we have derisked (sic) it because you can come to Tshwane and be sure that it works before you take it to your own municipality. Someone had to start, we are glad we have made the start and we are confident going into the future."

The mayor also revealed that SAPS and metro police are partnering with the City to pilot Wi-Fi Chat in crime prevention.