Updated Apr 2024

ALERT:
Should you consider to buy a SIM card at Cape Town Airport make sure it is in a sealed undamaged package!

Here we give you, as Tourist and Traveler in South Africa, some background information about how internet access in this beautiful country works.
All the things you need to know about obtaining a SIM card, free Wifi, connection speed and network coverage in Cape Town and the rest of South Africa.

Firstly please keep in mind that South Africa is still behind Europe and North America if it comes to speed, affordability and network coverage. You can see in this article where SA ranks versus the world. The good news is that most of the main routes and all metropoles in SA are covered by high speed mobile broadband. Therefore internet access and navigation with Google Maps or any other online routing app works really well in these areas.

The mobile broadband speed

On the mobile broadband the download speed varies from under 100 Kbps(GPRS) in rural areas up to 200 Mbps (LTE/5G) in cities depending on the coverage in your actual area. As an average you can expect +- 10 Mbps download speed.

Free Wifi in Hotels, B&B’s and Restaurants

Most Hotels, a lot of B&B’s and as well Restaurants offer free WiFi. However you might get disappointed.
Why?
Internet access and data is very expensive in South Africa and therefore the hospitality industry either limits the speed, amount of data or online time on their free Wifi Hotspots. The sign up process can take time and very often you have to give up lots of personal details to gain access.

Buying a SIM card in South Africa

Of course you can buy yourself a SA SIM card and load it with data and airtime. In theory the process is relatively simple. SIM cards are available in Provider Outlets (Vodacom, MTN, CellC, Telkom) and in most Supermarkets. The price for a pre-paid SIM card ranges from 0 to 10 Rand (60 US cents).

MTN and Vodacom are the best choice since they have the best coverage and highest speeds all over the South Africa.

Don’t forget to ask for the specific SIM format – Standard, Mini, Micro, Nano.
However sometimes you have to be lucky to find someone competent to help you with the whole process.
Often the queues are long and the service can be slow. Therefore don’t be in hurry when buying a SIM.

RICA – The Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act
The South African government legislation requires that all telephone cards have to be registered.
You need to present your passport to purchase a SIM card and proof of where you are staying during your time in SA.

Toping up data and airtime can be done in Outlets and Supermarkets as well. Just buy a voucher and follow the instructions.
There is really no big difference in the cost of data and airtime between the major providers. So don’t worry too much about this.

Please note that truly uncapped mobile data packages are not offered in SA. There is always a catch!
The same is valid for the Worldwide Providers who offer ‘unlimited data’. Yes they do but most of them reduce the download speed to snail pace after you have used up your daily allocated high speed data.

Click on the image to find out more about data prices Worldwide

The post SIM cards and Internet in South Africa appeared first on Mobile Wifi.

Free Wifi Hotspots in Cape Town 2019

Cape Town is one of the biggest tourist magnet in the World. Millions of tourists are visiting the Mother City every year.

Nowadays we all need or want to stay connected no matter where we are on planet earth. Internet connectivity is one of the most important requirements for tourists and business travelers.

Social media, image uploads, emails, navigating, booking accommodation and transport, retrieving local information are only a few things where the internet makes traveling just more convenient.

Roaming costs are expensive and everyone is looking for a cheap way to connect to the world wide web.

So what is the free internet situation in Cape Town?

Well certainly not as good as in European cities or in the US.

There are free public Hotspots however the speed of them is rather slow and there are data limits. [Update Nov 2019 – These Hotspots have silently disappeared] The second option are coffee shops and restaurants with free wifi. Some of them are offering quite fast connections others are hardly fast enough to check your emails.
Here you can read more about the free Wifi in coffee shops.

One thing is surely impossible to do and that is internet based navigation in and around the city.

Further on please always keep in mind that these free offerings should not be used for sensitive data or internet banking.

We have put together a list of free wifi hotspots in Cape Town for you.

Should you want to stay connected anywhere, anytime with highest speeds and at affordable rates just send us an enquiry.

Cape Town Travel recommendations for free internet.

Business Insider list of free internet coffee shops in Cape Town.

City of Cape Town free public Hotspots.

Wifi at the Cape Town Airport.

Happy surfing in Cape Town 🙂

 

Hire a mobile Hotspot in Cape Town

Always connected – Anywhere – Anytime – Fast – Affordable – Convenient

Order pocket Wifi

The post Free Wifi in Cape Town appeared first on Mobile Wifi.

UPDATE: 2107 DataSim does not exist anymore.

We shifted the SIM card in one of our industrial LTE Routers and we could connect right away.

As stated by DataSim we got the +- 284 kbps download speed.

Faceboock and Email are working at acceptable speed.

Youtube and naughty websites are blocked.

So for those who only do email and a bit of internet surfing and who want (or need) to be Telkom landline independent it is an OK package for R 169.00 per month. No contract.

The post DataSim uncapped mobile data test appeared first on Mobile Wifi.

Progressive City Sightseeing owner Claus Tworeck wants to offer internet connectivity on his Cape Town

Tourist Bus Tours. A great add on for the guests riding on the busses. It enables them to connect to

the internet whilst on the move through Cape Town.

MobileWiFi installed their 2 sim card industrial router to find out how well the system performs.

The Router is fitted with a MTN sim card and a Vodacom sim card. The router switches automatically between

the sims as coverage requires it.

In a first test speeds of up to 77 Mbps were experienced.

This second test shall provide more information about coverage, user behaviour, data usage, performance and reliability.

We will keep you updated – MobileWiFi – connected anywhere !

The post MobileWiFi in cooperation with City Sightseeing Cape Town Busses appeared first on Mobile Wifi.

Good looking and packed with features. Made in Germany.

• GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSPA, HSPA+, LTE(Long Term Evolution)
• Fully implemented IPSec and OpenVPN
• Intelligent Firewall
• Perl Interpreter
• Intelligent Routing
• Connection Manager
• Wide Temperature Range
• Metal Housing, Industrial quality
• E1 approval for vehicles issued by “Kraftfahrt Bundesamt”
• Unlimited number of WiFi connections

Router Functions and Characteristics

Due to its high manufacturing quality the router is especially suitable for use in industrial environments and vehicles. An important thing to note is its extremely high reliability due to the use of two SIM cards (dual SIM support) and the the intelligent backup management of the VPN router. This guarantees almost 100% availability.

Temperature range and solid build makes this router perfect for the use in a Bus/Coach.

The fully implemented IPSec and OpenVPN standard, guarantee the highest security during transmission of data. The authentication can be made either using deposited certificates or pre-shared keys. All modern encryption algorithms such as 3DES or AES with up to 256 bit encryption length are supported.

The 4G router can also  be easily integrated into a company network (via permanently established VPN tunnel) and can also be accessed via private IP addressing. In this case DynDNS is not necessary, but it can be established at any time. Terminal equipment is connected using two Ethernet ports.

To make your network secure from attacks a configurable high security firewall with intrusion detection is available. This can be supplemented by the possibility of depositing your own scripts and rules. The so-called Pearl Scripting Interpreter offers the possibility for your own individual software installation on the VPN router.

The transmission of video data must be highlighted, a special buffer-management as well as an optional extended memory are used to transfer the data-stream quickly and smoothly.

Using one of the Ethernet ports the router can be connected to a fixed point via a DSL modem. The backup management is implemented using 3G/4G.

The 3G and also 4G radio connection is made using a multi-band modem LTE/HSPA+/HSDPA/HSUPA/UMTS/EDGE/GPRS.

Using LTE you have an even larger bandwidth available on the VPN router.

For configuration, it comes with a user-friendly a web interface. Hence, the VPN router can be locally or remotely configured.Experts can also configure the VPN router using a CLI (command line interface), and it can even be accessed and even send commands via SMS texts (e.g. Reset).

Contact us for more information

The post MobileWiFi’s industrial Router appeared first on Mobile Wifi.

Fast internet without Telkom being involved finally is a reality.

We tested the Afrihost mobile Data offer with a Huawei E5756.

The order and delivery is easy and straight forward. The Sim card arrived within 48 hours.
The delivery company MDS keeps you updated via email about your delivery status.
So let us put the sim card in the E5756 which is 4G unit with possible speed up to 43.2 Mbps.
The setup is easy. One only needs to set the APN to ‘Afrihost’ … Done … Online.

Let’s surf. And we do !The speed is awesome we got over 15 Mbps.

There you have it. Mobile data beats any ADSL speed.

Pity that mobile data is very expensive. 1 GB sets you back by 99 Rand.
Hopefully European standards will come soon to South Africa. There mobile flat rates start at 100 R per month.

The post Mobile Wifi Test – Huawei E5756 and Afrihost appeared first on Mobile Wifi.