Standing in the parking lot of Groenkloof, a nature reserve tucked in Tshwane’s heart, you can spy a white box mounted on a tall pole. Emblazoned on its front is ‘Project Isizwe’, the public WiFi project launched in 2013. It claims to be the first free public WiFi project rolled out in a local metro. This is not entirely true (particularly since Isizwe’s roots trace to Stellenbosch in 2012), but that would be splitting hairs. Isizwe was certainly the first such rollout in a major local city.

Isizwe is the visible tip to a growing iceberg of metro connectivity. It already registers over 170 000 daily connections, totalling 111 million sessions since its launch. In the Western Cape, WiFi spots launched earlier this year accrued 37 000 devices and over 1.7 terabytes of free data usage in five months. Cape Town’s underlying fibre backbone is over 800km long, Johannesburg’s equivalent over 900km.