Telkom has announced it will provide free Wi-Fi Internet access at almost a thousand polling stations around the country on election day, 3 August.
The telecommunications operator said it is providing the free Wi-Fi to showcase its network.
This pilot programme will utilise Telkom’s existing LTE/4G infrastructure and will likely be expanded for future elections, if successful, it said in a statement.
The free Wi-Fi offering is part of a broader involvement by Telkom in the 2016 municipal elections. The company has been contracted by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to provide connectivity and other ICT services across the country.
“Telkom will provide a variety of ICT solutions to be sure that every point of the electoral chain, from the local voting station to the national results centre is connected to an efficient, reliable network that will validate and report on these important municipal election results,” it said in the statement.
“Telkom will enable the safe and secure delivery of ballot results from over 22 000 polling stations around the country to the national results operation centre at the Tshwane Show Grounds, via nearly 350 municipal election offices, nine provincial results operation centres and the IEC’s headquarters.
Telkom will also fulfil the requests of broadcasters and media channels through the use of dedicated Internet links.
The solution includes access for the IEC’s wide-area network through Telkom’s virtual private network services platform, which uses multiple access mediums, including satellite technology, Diginet/Martis, Metro LAN, ADSL and ISDN technologies.
Telkom’s data centre at its Centurion, Pretoria headquarters is at the heart of the IEC’s disaster recovery plan in the event something goes wrong.
“Working as a mirror image of the IEC’s head office, all data activities at the IEC HQ are replicated at Telkom’s data centre in real time. In the unlikely event of disaster at IEC HQ, the disaster recovery site will take over all activities and the elections will proceed uninterrupted,” said Telkom spokeswoman Jacqui O’Sullivan. — © 2016 NewsCentral Media
