Over the last five years, public WiFi has become far more accessible throughout Europe. From 16 million public hotspots in 2013, there are now more than 100 million across the continent, with countries such as Italy, Norway and Austria drastically improving their WiFi availability in that time. However, the Irish government has come under fire recently for substantial delays in the implementation of broadband availability to remote regions of the country.
While great strides have been made in public WiFi availability since 2013, the EU continues to work towards grandiose medium-terms to improve the service further. Within the next two years, it intends to have free WiFi in every municipality in Europe and a minimum download speed of 100MB per second in all households. By 2025, it hopes to introduce 5G broadband throughout the continent, although progress on this remains slow for the short-term.
In an increasingly digital age, the need for reliable public WiFi has never been greater, even though international roaming charges have largely been abolished. The infographic below, which was created by Paradyn, shows how substantially European public WiFi has grown and why this growth shows no sign of stalling.
