Case Study: Project Isizwe achieves free Internet access for underserved South African communities with RUCKUS Networks

Project Isizwe - Customer Case Study

Project Isizwe is a South African non‑profit that set out to bridge the digital divide by delivering free, high‑speed Wi‑Fi to underserved urban and peri‑urban communities—particularly around schools—where residents could not afford 3G service. The challenge was to provide an easy‑to‑deploy, carrier‑class network that was extremely cost‑effective for municipalities while removing the usual commercial mark‑ups.

They solved this through a public‑private partnership model: municipalities provide mounting assets, power and backhaul and pay a low bulk rate, while partners like Ruckus supply the hardware and management (2,000+ outdoor APs, WLAN controllers and analytics). The rollout delivered up to 250 MB/day per user, grew to 420 Free Internet Zones reaching about 1 million citizens with ~20,000 daily users (and since launch more than 355,000 unique users and 8 million sessions), created jobs and enabled measurable educational and economic benefits, with ongoing expansion into other regions.

Project Isizwe