Bringing the information to the remote, marginalized communities in Africa has previously been challenging for governments because deployment of wired networks is expensive and not as profitable as in urban areas. Fortunately, the increasing spread of wireless networking addresses this issue by the allowing for the establishment of the Internet connections in those areas at a much faster pace than anticipated. This major success has greatly changed the way people communicate, share information and also the way they live by eliminating the challenges of distance and location. Consequently, almost all areas need to be connected as well so as to benefit from technological advancements and from participating in global knowledge systems. This paper explains how wireless technologies (i.e. Worldwide interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) and Wireless Fidelity (WiFi)) can be merged and deployed to further extend the networks in the marginalized rural communities, with a field-site at the Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL) in Dwesa which is located in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. Dwesa was chosen as the field-site because it has a WiMAX and VSAT already deployed and also there was a need to further extend the network. The combination of WiMAX and VSAT presents a relatively new prototype where VSAT is used as a backhaul Internet connectivity technology for WiMAX sites covering many Digital Access Nodes (DANs) which in our case are schools. This network undergoes regular incremental updating and redesign to cater for the changing socio-technical factors. This paper again, provides a detailed overview of how WiFi technology is merged into this network. The main idea is to create WiFi hotspots by deploying access points around each and every school. These will cover the air space at the edges of the network, but being managed centrally at controllers. These Wi-Fi hotspots created will provide high speed wireless access services for users within the coverage area. As for schools which are close by they can enjoy supplementary services like seamless switchover and load balancing. This paper also provides an overview of security issues on a converged WiFi and WiMAX networks. These access points will provide network services for authenticated users within its coverage. ChilliSpot captive portal will be used as a wireless access controller for the wireless hotpot since it can provide better security as compared to the WPA. ChilliSpot is accepted as a better authenticating access controller in wireless networks especially Wi-Fi networks. ChilliSpot creates a virtual private network which uses a dialogue in granting and restricting users for Internet. Finally, the paper explains how this telecommunication network can facilitate the successful undertaking of the ICT4D intervention which will definitely boost the socio-economic lives of these community members.

Keywords: Digital access nodes, information and communication technology for development, very small aperture terminal, WiFi protected access.