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European Commission has a "Wifi4EU" initative, provides 93k high-speed private access points across the EU, free of charge. (slrpnk.net)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25779751

The intative promises to be privacy-friendly with no tracking. Stating:

Your privacy is important. The WiFi4EU app ensures a private online experience with no tracking or data collection. Simply connect and enjoy free public Wi-Fi without concerns.

Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/wifi4eu-citizens

Will be interesting to see how this spans and plays out in reality. Looks promising too, did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too. (Scanning tool is called Exodus)

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[–] 32 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Well I don't know if that's a good use of EU money. I'd rather see investments in large and difficult infrastructure, rail, software, datacenters, industrial sectors we're currently lacking, grid investments - stuff like that.

End user internet access is more like thousands of small decentralised projects. The coordination might make it easier to use compared to if everyone did their own free wifi project, but that's such a small benefit...

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    As always, it's not like both aren't possible. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of railway projects ongoing at the same time, to only quote one of your examples.

    A government can take care of more than one issue at a time, luckily.

    It may be a small benefit for you (I assume you are german based on your server), but not every european country or citizen has the same access to internet. This is a good initiative, but obviously not primarily intended for the richer citizens/countries of the union.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I would say it's a small benefit for anyone. It's not like people will walk to the town square, or the park or the hospital to use some free EU Wifi.

    The title is also very wrong I found out. It's not being launched. It's not even funded any more.

    Wifi4EU ran from 2018 to 2020 with a funding of 120 million EUR. They paid up to 15 thousand EUR for equipment and installation per municipality, the local municipalities had to pay for the internet service and maintenance.

    This is the result: https://wifi4eu.ec.europa.eu/#/list-accesspoints

    Still looks like a pointless exercise to me.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    15k for several distinct hotspots in a city is pretty reasonable, depending on what equipment they are using.

    Enterprise quality IT gear is expensive. Each access point can easily be 1k, and that excludes any routers/firewall/switching that you may need at each site. As an example, I've worked in places that had small retail locations that at a minimum had 8k of network equipment, with some locations pushing into the 100k+ range based on needs and size. That's per site. The above is all in USD, but just equipment. Labor can add 30% to the costs.

    15k euro for a whole city that includes equipment and installation sounds very fiscally responsible.

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