I used to wonder whether our own Takoradi has met the new challenge of the internet that is making use of Wireless Hotspot for accessing the internet. It's a fact that most people in Accra enjoy free Wi-Fi hotspots at certain areas in the city. I have made use of the Busy Internet free wireless internet at the Shopping Mall off the Spintex Road in Accra and it was cool.
A lot has happened since the days of the early internet Cafes like eBase, Frankett, Internet Ghana and the other café's which were operating with between 4 and 6 computers. The transition from then to now is just astounding. The facilities present at the new cafés are far better than what we use to see in the early days. These days we have Vodafone, Cyberlink, Coastal, Unicon, Mexx II, Rogai, 2 Gees, Joe Andrews which are located in the central part of the city. In addition to that there are cafés in the other parts like Anaji, New Site, Cocoa Villa, Airport Ridge, Kwesimintsim, Effia Kuma.
In addition to all these cafés I wanted to see how well we are making use of Wireless technology to access the internet in the City.
NB: I will be using Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) and Wireless interchangeably to mean the same thing.
I set out to do a small project and find all the Wi-Fi hotspots in the city especially the free ones and the result is stunning. On the 24th July, 2010 which was a Sunday I decided to take a drive through the city and carry out my research. I knew it was a bad time because most businesses and schools would have switched off their routers but I was wrong, I found a total of 68 hotspot scattered all over the city excluding the one at main Vodafone office. I also found something interesting about the hotspots. I kept detecting the same hotspot with the name CTSL Hotspot. I started to get confused because I have never seen Wi-Fi Hotspot with such a big coverage before so something said I should check the Mac Address and voila my answer was there.
The Mac Addresses were different but they were also consistent. I then concluded that CTSLHotspot belongs to one entity. All of them were also open so I connected to one and was met with a nice user login screen. Everything became clear that CTSLHotspot is a commercial wireless internet access.
After a quick enquiry I was told that CTSL Metronet is deploying wirelesshotspots all over the twin city to provide hustle – free internet to everyone who is using a mobile device like Laptop/Notebook and smartphones with Wi-Fi like the Nokia N & E series, Blackberry, iPhone, Nexus One etc. All the information about how to login is on the page.
Apart from the CTSL Metronet Hotspot I also detected about four Hotspots that belong to Hilcrest Hotel and they work just like the CTSL Hotspot. One has to buy a voucher at their counter/reception and use the credentials to login to be able to browse. I have a feeling they are testing these things to see how the public will get along with it so that they make a big business out it.
This is a step in the right direction because its puts the Twin City at par with most big cities in the world although this is a private.
Business men and average internet users can heave a sigh of relief now because they don't need to be visiting Internet Cafes to get access to the internet. Another wonderful thing is that one can browse 24/7 and will be able to download any amount of data anytime.
One thing that might interest many free–things–loving people is that the Wi-Fi hotspot at the Harbour area around the Fan Milk Depot is still there and it is still free. They have even given it a name as Free Public Wi-Fi.
There are a lot of things I want to say about these Wi-Fi hotspots but I don't want to bore anyone with too much text so I will end here. I will embark on another drive through on a week day and see what I will find.
My next post will delve deep into things and explore all the advantages the general public will get from them. I will talk about what devices can be able to access these hotspots.
NB://The overall layout will get a makeover very soon
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