EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Internet, Legislation, Technology

"By opening the WiFi4EU portal today (March 20th), we are taking a concrete step towards helping municipalities provide free WiFi. While this is important progress, I also strongly encourage the European Parliament and Council to conclude work on the proposed telecoms code to ensure high-speed connectivity across the whole of the EU. This includes Europe-wide coordination of spectrum, and forcefully stimulating investments in the high-capacity networks that Europe needs," European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip said in a press release.

The WiFi4EU program offers vouchers worth 15,000 euros for municipalities to set up WiFi hotspots in public spaces, including libraries, museums, public parks, squares. As stated by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the WiFi4EU initiative aims at connecting "every European village and every city with free wireless internet access around the main centers of public life by 2020."

Municipalities can use the WiFi4EU vouchers to purchase and install WiFi equipment (wireless access points) in their chosen centers of local public life. Costs for maintaining the network will be covered by the municipality.

Altogether EUR 120 million are available from the EU budget until 2020 to fund equipment for public free WiFi services in up to 8,000 municipalities in all member states as well as Norway and Iceland.

In order to participate in the program, municipalities should sign up on the WiFi4EU portal as of March 20. During the application phase, which will start in mid-May, the first call will be launched and registered municipalities can apply for a first lot of 1,000 WiFi4EU vouchers, which will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Ensuring a geographic balance, the Commission in the assignment phase will announce the 1,000 municipalities that will receive funding through the first call. Each participating country will receive at least 15 vouchers. In the coming two years, four more WiFi4EU calls will be launched. 

WiFi4EU-funded networks will be free of charge, free of advertising and free of personal data harvesting. Funding will only be provided to networks that do not duplicate existing free private or public offers with a similar quality in the same public space.

Announced by Juncker in his State of the Union address in September 2016, the WiFi4EU initiative is part of the ambitious overhaul of EU telecoms rules including new measures to meet Europeans' growing connectivity needs and boost Europe's competitiveness.