Well done Michelle Tryon for the outstanding work you are doing here. We are privileged to work with you and to help get your internet up and running for your class.
Michelle runs Destiny Fulfilled, a non-profit company which offers free tutoring, mentorship, motivational talks and entrepreneurial skills to underprivileged high school learners! They are always in need of sponsors and donations from the public to keep the project going. More information click on the picture below:
Please everyone support the youth festival on the 16th of June 2023. Next week Friday!
But just because we are not posting does not mean we have stopped working! Community WiFi is still going and very busy helping where we can. We have been able to provide free internet for local schools-in-need for 5 years. And this platform has enabled us to do a lot of other important community work too. Like set up and run https://plastic-cleanup-sa.co.za. Although we are a non-profit organization, we do not get any funding from the government. We understand that times are tough and South African government budget is very tight. To date we have no major corporate sponsorships and no major donors either. All the funding for running costs comes from subscription contributions. We have a little money left over each month to put towards community projects. which does limit us in what we can do. Do you want to sponsor us or give us a donation? Or help us to set up a funding campaign? It would be really welcome! And we would be happy to show our public appreciation on this site. For more information, please contact oliver@communitywifi.org.za
Clara also finished school last year. Starting on the first line support team. Welcome Clara. You have made a great start, we are sure you have a great future ahead of you!
“Hi Oliver Hope u well. I don’t know how to express my sincerest gratitude for assisting my school with free wifi. We really appreciate it. It is working very well. May God always shower u in abundance with choices blessings for your kind heart. Please do visit my school so that the Principal and staff can meet the man with a great heart. Thank you and God bless
Well done William on achieving your MTCNA – MikroTik Certified Network Associate.
William started with us in 2021 at 19 years of age. He was not able to finish school due to COVID 19 ravaging his community and lack of government funding shutting down his school. He has worked incredibly hard this year and grown from strength to strength. And now is a qualified network professional. Way go William, your future is bright.
It is hard to imagine a high school in this day and age not having internet, but this what we discovered when we knocked on their door.
The project began one evening while dropping the team at home. Across the road behind a few houses I noticed a big building partially hidden by layers of rusty bard wire fence. After a few enquiries I was able to establish that it was a large school with over 1500 students. With no internet.
We got in contact with Principal Nxumalo who allowed us to survey and start our planning. It was very saddening to see so many children having to endure the class room conditions that they do. But their happy faces and upbeat attitudes were all the inspiration we needed to want to do something about it. The school is generally in trouble. Poor sanitation. Crumbling buildings. Overcrowded conditions. And no internet, anywhere on campus. Not even in the admin offices. We realised that we can’t change everything, so we focused on what we could change, by giving internet connectivity.
A week later early in the morning we were on site and fitting the main link.
The roof was high, the tiles were broken and a lot of the roof trusses were rotten. Which would have meant bad injury if we had put a foot wrong. But we had committed to making this dream a reality, so we pushed on. A few hours later and the main link was up with secondary P2P AP for admin building.
There were a lot of challenges that day. From intermittant electricity supply. Dangerous and unhealthy working conditions. Security concerns. And having to install equipment to be vandal proof. But early that evening, sunburnt, hungry, dirty and tired we had done it.
After a brief celebration with the vice principal, my team and the night watchmen we flicked the switch.
Conclusion: We have proven that it is possible to install 100mbps fibre based internet at a rural school, in one day, with a $1000 budget. Running costs going forward Virtually none. The school pays for it’s own electricity. Our fibre connection is under-utilised during daytime when the school needs it, and freed up at night for peak hour use so our premium subscribers are not adversely unaffected. So no problems for us to provide the bandwidth for free. And look what has been created. Possibility to change the lives of 1500 high school students by freeing up access to unlimited global educational resources. Amazing goodwill of the community, and a feeling from giving unconditionally like this, that cannot be equalled.
Lessons learned: A lot more goes into a project like this than just buying equipment and installing it.
1. Budgeting for the cost of the equipment: Basically we saved up for the gear, the school did not have insurance, and we could not replace it if it was damaged or stolen. We also could only afford equipment to provide the computer classroom with internet. We would love to have been able to get all the admin block and 1500 kids connected up too but at least there is core service in for essential education functions for now. The rest will have to come later.
2. Choice of technology: What would have been great here is some TV whitespace tech as this area is ideal for it. Far better bang for buck than 5G. We would love to help roll out solutions like Microsoft Airband and Google Station that are already live in other parts of South Africa. We have reached out to them so let’s hope they see our potential. But for now Mikrotik has proven to be cost effective, robust and easy to work with. We have been working with this technology for years so we know how to get the most out of it.
3. Logistics: Make sure you have a reliable car. We needed to get out to Lindelane in Kwa Mashu. It is quite a far drive, bad roads, pot holes and dirt roads, so we could find ourselves in trouble if our old Toyota Landy had let us down. But luckily she kept it together.
5. Provisioning: There is no fibre within 20km of this site so we had to set up a 100mbps link from one of our fibre based high sites in Durban. There were a few bounces to get over hills, as this tech really only works with line of sight. But with a bit of tweaking of NV2 protocol, over 20km we still managed to get good TxRx Signal strength and decent Signal to Noise. Averaged 15ms latency over a 24 hours bandwidth burn in. Very satisfactory.
6. Legalities: Make sure you have an ECN and ECNs license from ICASA. Consultation with the department of education.
Imagine we could give one rural school a day internet. For next to no money. With lightweight and flexible installation teams like this. Imagine what an impact that would have. Next month we will have saved up another $1000 and will be doing the same again at Hillgrove High School down the road. Catch up with us then. And if you are high school anywhere in KZN please get in touch with us and let’s see what we can do to help.
For the record: Unfortunately we could not work with Africanopy or use their license because we could not reach agreement on terms and conditions, so we would not consent to them using our IP, business model or operational data to apply for funding of their operations. As there was no help forthcoming from them we had to go it alone. With our own money, and resources we had available. And it is good that we did. It helped to make us appreciate things more.
Lots of love, The Communal Networking Systems team.
Yes really. Hello world! We love to see the delight on kids’ faces the first time they connect to the world, greet it, and start becoming part of a global interconnected community. Read on to see the projects we have done to make this possible.
