South African broadband provider MWEB, a subsidiary of South African pay-TV provider MultiChoice South Africa Holding, has discontinued its stand-alone Wi-Fi services and is directing users to connect to AlwaysOn instead, MyBroadband reports. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, AlwaysOn is owned by Dimension Data, which in September 2014 acquired several of MWEB’s divisions, including MWEB Business, Optinet Service and Optinet Network via its subsidiary Internet Solutions. Shortly after, Dimension Data launched an open access carrier-grade Wi-Fi network – dubbed WirelessCo – which combines the network assets of MWEB and AlwaysOn; the new business entity is 51% owned by Dimension Data, while MultiChoice retains a 49% stake.
A spokesperson for MWEB said that the discontinuation of the Wi-Fi services forms part of a bigger move to rebrand its services and those of Internet Solutions. ‘As an interim measure, WirelessCo is using the AlwaysOn gateway to manage access to this new combined network … This is a short-term solution until a new access gateway operated under the WirelessCo brand is released’, MWEB was cited as saying.