WiFi4EU initiative provides free Wi-Fi in public spaces across Europe
hadea.ec.europa.eu
hadea.ec.europa.eu
Germany already has a grassroots, volunteer-run network of free WiFi hotspots called Freifunk [1], which has pretty decent coverage in a lot of the larger cities. I'm sure similar initiatives exist in other EU countries.
Does Wifi4EU leverage this in any way? Nope, there is no way for volunteer-run networks to get included in the app [2]. Instead, it looks like municipalities have to apply for Wifi4EU funding (which they currently can't because "The next call has not been announced."), set up brand new hotspots themselves, and only then are eligible for inclusion in the app's database. [3]
Volunteer-run infrastructure is fine, but you cannot rely on it. Can you really blame a volunteer if things break? No. They will hopefully fix it on they own time and dime, and that's good.
Volunteer-managed infrastructure is a courtesy. The fact that it's been reliable so far is no indicator of future reliability.
EU-driven initiative on the other hand supplies funds (15'000 euros, for proper hardware, maintenance and replacement parts) and uniformity: users in spain will have to go through the same procedures and configurations whether they are in italy, spain, germany, france or any other eu member state (does freifunk does the same?)
And looking at the prices for enterprise grade WiFi these days... 15K EUR goes very little.
"The same procedures", really?
Can you use a wifi hotspot anonymously in Italy? I mean completely without the need to authenticate or provide a mobile number to receive one-time SMS code...
I know for certain you can in Germany. Join the hotspot, tick a box to accept the T&Cs, off you go....
They can only help that by securing the equipment and networks. Telling public "don't trust these because foreign hackers" is not going to do much.
There’s no real reason to trust wifi access points at this point, or demand they be trustworthy.
But, as the saying goes, with the incompetent conservatives (CDU) there's no limit on how they waste tax money. If there is a friend of them doing something for more expensive, it's getting bought; because cheaper means always worse, right? Right?
For example, in a small town with around 20k citizens, they spend more than 50k EUR per year for two Wi-Fi spots near the local library, and those are "maintained" by an energy company. They also had to buy those access points for an initial sum of 20k EUR per access point, because they were very special and integrated in the street lights (not kidding you).
Network speeds are less than 10Mbit/s. For that amount of money per year, you could've easily gotten a fibre connection to the library building (which also has less than 10Mbit/s internet connection, so they are kinda fucked once more than 5 people use the internet there).
The moral of the story is somewhat that it's so ridiculous how incompetent politicians are when it comes to tech.
I'm kind of glad that this is an EU-driven project that's delegated top-down, because that means those incompetent politicians have no excuse to buy overly expensive tech stuff from their golf buddies anymore.
"Incompetent"...
Everything within Europe and especially within EU runs on corruption. You're either a parasite or a host if you live in Europe. Reap that juicy corruption money by befriending people with influence or pay the salaries and luxurious lifestyles of the people who do with your taxes.
I've seen whole parks being built with a huge sign saying funded by the EU but they never opened or even built an entrance to it. Because that would mean maintenance and the subsidy had already been cashed.
I don't think it's corruption per se on the part of the EU (it is on the builders' part of course). But rather a lack of interest in how the money is spent.
> The suburb of Budapest has built a luxurious kindergarten that suspiciously looks like a private residence - with €550K of EU money. It doesn't accept any children.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1ejr4a8/the_suburb_...
When they throw hundreds of thousands of Euros around, without having the competence for spending a fraction of that for checking that it is used as intended, then they shouldn't have that ability.
The road leads to a chalet, and the only one who it benefits is the chalet's owner, making it easier for his drunkard customers to drive right to it on the weekends, with zero walking involved.
It's not very cheap if you want to use it for months, but plenty of other options around too
Amusingly this plan includes 40Gb/month in Germany at no additional costs which is much cheaper than a German plan.
I’ve also seen some cheaper providers than this in DE but they limit 5G to 50mbps :(
You can do the trick of buying up a stack of prepaid SIM cards when travelling and using a cheap dongle, but it’s a lot of effort and eventually stops working - probably due to the IMEI being banned though I’ve not confirmed that.
It’s less effort to just snag a new local SIM upon landing at most airports and using it as a hotspot.
Or, you know. Rolling out WiFi as a public service. Which would be kinda cool.
My “solution” for a while was a stack of prepaid throwaway SIM cards with unlimited data from a nearby country and a cheap USB powered 4G hotspot in my bag powered by a power bank. They would last about a month.
This also won't help with coverage, of course, and if you want a phone number, you would need an extra SIM for that.
Looks like this is not a new thing, it would be nice to have a more unified experience across the EU (Just like https://eduroam.org), but I wonder if it would be more useful to have a unified minimum data cap on mobile networks instead of building out WiFi coverage across cities?
That said, now that many phones support dual-SIM, I do wish there was a low-friction way to connect to a local 5G network without downloading an eSIM profile and all that.
I haven’t really had much signal problem and I’m not travelling through particularly built up areas (on the New York to Miami train, nearing the GA/FL border)
On most trains I've traveled on, Wi-Fi (if available) also works much better since the antenna for that is usually on top of the train, and windows are sometimes coated with a metallic paint to keep out solar radiation.
In the EU there are no roaming costs so it's not any different when travelling.
Besides that, neither tethering (for reasons other than cost, mentioned above) nor international roaming (increased latency) are a perfect replacement for fast local Wi-Fi at this point.
(also: increased latency for roaming?)
So yes, Eduroam is no different than roaming on any 4G/5G network, but it's also not worse. If anything, I trust the backend security of Eduroam providers more than I trust mobile carriers.
> Connect to over 93 000 hotspots across the EU:
I've seen this happen in some airports or even entire cities that broadcast the Eduroam SSID as well. Most curiously, I've seen at least one drink vending machine in Japan broadcasting functional Eduroam.
You don't need authentication: you accept terms of use, and you are good to go. Also, there is a cap in the amount of data that you can use each day (based on MAC, I guess), but it is generous enough to allow me to stream for youtube from one hour at the gym, or to work for two hours when I'm in the mood of doing it from the garden near the swimming pool.
A friend of mine told me that the EU is paying the local administration for the equipment and installation, but there is an explicit condition in the contract that blocks any kind of personal tracking.
So I would say this is a neat project. And 120M€ for an entity of this size doesn't look like an extraordinary amount of money.
I can't speak for every install, but some of them do the tracking based on MAC (since it's the only identifier the network gets), so I guess you could avoid it by randomising your MAC and connecting again.
Just to make things confusing, there's also WiFi 5 (previously known as 802.11ac) which is a collection of WiFi standards. You can operate WiFi 5 on 5GHz. But you could also operate WiFi 4 (previously known as 802.11n) on 5GHz or 2.4GHz. WiFi 6 operates on 2.4GHz or 5GHz, and 6E operates on 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz. WiFi 7 and 8 operate on 2.4, 5, and 6GHz.
>Privacy friendly
>Releases it as closed non-free software No, thanks.At a first glance, Openroaming also seems to use "Passpoint"/WPA Enterprise, which not nearly all devices support, so at least a backup SSID makes sense.
IDK, maybe I would feel different if I used laptop on the go more, but I doubt it. Having a mobile phone seems to cover it now.
I think you raise a good point though. I'm automatically suspicious of free WiFi.
Some do (especially those in markets with relatively cheap plans or large data allowances), others don't.
For one thing, that bypasses the German requirements regarding presenting a physical id in person to get cell service.
It’s possible that only works well for travelers though.
You have access to a nice plan - and that's good - but not all EU countries have nice plans and cheap prices. Someone in, say, Portugal doesn't have a local "100GB for €20" offer. They probably also can't get the same offer you can because your provider will ask them for a local address, a local bank account, there will be a different language, etc.
Most providers also have rules on how long you can use roaming for, so it's unlikely that you can just pick a plan from a French provider and use it in Germany (or multiple countries) for a year straight... For that you'll need a travelling eSIM or something like that, but is anyone offering a travelling eSIM with 100GB for €20 a month?
Essentially your mistake is assuming that everyone in Europe can get 100GB for €20. Some can, some can't. And that's the problem.
With F-Droid requiring either of those options by design, I don't think we'll see many government-run projects get F-Droid repositories.
That said, I doubt anyone will have a problem grabbing the .apk from somewhere internet and installing it that way.
I'm annoyed that they made this project app-based. I'd like to be able to use my computer on one of these networks...
For 7EUR/month I have 30GB of data transfer + unlimited SMS and calls in my my country + ~8GB of data in whole EU, every month. There is no cheaper option. Who needs public Wi-Fi?
EU should increase the competitiveness of communication operators and not finance such stupid ideas. Also map in that app is online only. So you need internet access to get internet access...
Data prices vary wildly by country. And no, you cannot use a foreign carrier to get cheap data and roam all year, they'll find you and charge out-of-package pricing for every gigabyte you've used (which isn't the standard rate).
If you can settle for 50Mbps (not really 5G, but already Aldi and Netto had a 100Mbps limit which is... basically the ITU definition of 4G), here's 50GB/month for 13 EUR: https://www.lebara.de/de/vertrag/hello-flex/hello-25-flex.ht...