European Commission will give municipalities 15,000 euros for free WiFi hotspotshot

Municipalities in European member states are eligible for funding of 15,000 euros if they submit a plan for free public Wi-Fi hotspots. In this way, the European Commission wants to improve access to the internet in up to 8000 municipalities.

Municipalities can register from Tuesday to be eligible for the amount of 15,000 euros, which they have to spend on hardware for free WiFi access points. They must submit their application in May.

The money will be awarded on a ‘first come, first served’ basis, reports the European Commission. However, the committee wants to distribute the allocation in a geographically balanced way and each participating Member State will receive at least fifteen vouchers.

It concerns a first series of a thousand vouchers that the EU will be distributing, in the next two years there will be four more opportunities for municipalities to compete. The committee demands that municipal Wi-Fi networks remain free, free from advertising and without collecting personal data from users. Nor should comparable networks, whether private or not, be present.

The amounts are only for the purchase of the hardware. The costs for keeping the networks up and running must be paid by the municipalities themselves. The plan is part of WiFi4EU, which aims to ‘provide every European village and city with free, wireless Internet access near major centers of public life by 2020’.