Costs for eduroam in South Africa

Participation Fees

As a general principle, eduroam participants bear their own infrastructure costs (e.g. RADIUS servers and wireless network). 

Around the world different eduroam roaming federations (national roaming operators) have different approaches to covering the costs of running the roaming service. This details TENET's cost structures for eduroam in South Africa, which may differ to other countries.

Fees for Service Providers (Visited Organisations)

TENET does not charge eduroam service providers a participation fee, and there are no recurring costs for participating in eduroam as a service provider in South Africa.

It is possible that in future we may introduce a once-off joining fee to cover some of the administrative overheads. However, if this were introduced, it would not be applied retrospectively. (Existing service providers at the time of its introduction would be exempt.)

Where service providers ask TENET to assist with integration, and where TENET is able to provide such assistance, we reserve the right to recover any additional costs we incur at our prevailing consulting rates. This would be negotiated in advance on a per-case basis.

Fees for Identity Providers (Home Organisations)

The recurring costs for participating in eduroam as an identity provider are calculated based on the number of full-time equivalent staff and students at the participating institution using the following tiering:

For public and private institutions recognised by the Department of Higher Education and Training, the FTE count from the last published HEMIS submissions will be used. For other organisations, a mutually agreeable method for determining FTE count must be derived. Note that published HEMIS submissions usually lag by approximately two years.

Discounts and exemptions

• Institutions that subscribe to a basket of NREN services from TENET receive up-to a 100% discount on federation participation fees so long as they continue to receive that basket and their total monthly spend with TENET exceeds the required threshold.


• ‡ eduroam identity providers with 150 or fewer users may use the eduroam Managed IdP service at no charge, provided they would otherwise be eligible for an NREN connection.


• Non-profit or public benefit eduroam identity providers that subscribe directly to the eduroam service and that provide a reciprocal service provider used by other institutions receive up-to a 50% discount on the RADIUS profile fees.

Managed IdP / Managed SP / hosted geteduroam

TENET makes the eduroam managed IdP, eduroam managed SP, and hosted geteduroam services available at cost to eligible institutions. Since the costs of providing these are currently born by GÉANT, we make them available at no additional charge.

eduroam Visitor Access

The eduroam Visitor Access service is currently only available as part of a discounted basket. Additonal fees may apply for SMS exceeding a volume threshold.