Hot (spot) news from the MilkyWay
21st October 2003

Africa's first public Internet access venue, the MilkyWay Internet Café, has announced another first: a public wireless Internet 'hotspot' on the Rosebank Boulevard. Customers with their own Laptop's or PDA's can now access the Internet at highspeed over 802.11b Wireless connections whilst enjoying fine coffee and refreshments provided by the Café. And it's all legit now given Icasa's legalisation of hotspots last week.

Bruce Gillespie, who founded the café back way back in 1994 when cyberspace was still science fiction, says they have taken a different approach with this implementation compared to other local 802.11 hotspots: "We've gone for simple unregulated access via a dedicated DSL circuit. This means that there are no logins, registration nor encryption obstacles when customers connect, making it easy to use. There's no need to prepay, customers settle up when done. Using a PC is a struggle enough, so we chose the minimum-of-obstacles option for our customers. This does mean that someone can be lurking in the shadows down the Boulevard surreptitiously jacking in via a plamtop or whatever, but who cares since it's our mission to bring the Internet to the people anyway. And because the wireless access is on a dedicated circuit, it won't affect the Quality Of Service to our other MilkyWay customers."

The Café is unique in many ways, the emphasis being on creating a congenial atmosphere for Internet access and general PC usage. Bruce says that they have resisted using PIN logins or any other regimes of control in the café: "This makes for increased customer satisfaction and lower barriers to being able to accomplish what needs to be done. Besides, openness and trust is what the roots of the Internet is all about and we would like to promote that ethos."

The hotspot infrastructure was designed and implemented by PCB Technologies with a DSL account provided by WiseNet Internet Services. PCB Services Director Paul Boulle says it was very straightforward "We did a lot of research and there are some nice open-source Linux options for firewalling and access control but the route we took was one of least resistance for public access, in line with the MilkyWay Internet Café's mission requirements. We are all big supporters of open source, in fact the café has Open Office running very nicely on all the workstations. It's going well."

The MilkyWay Internet Café can be found on the Rosebank Boulevard between The Zone and The Firs shopping centre in Rosebank, Johannesburg. Contact number is (011) 447-1295 and the homepage is www.milkyway.co.za