In its first phase, WiFi4EU has provided funding to 2,800 municipalities (€42 million), approximately one-third of the total of €120 million and 8,000 municipalities across all EU member states, as well as Norway and Iceland. The goal is for all public spaces—museums, squares, hospitals, government buildings, etc.—to offer free, high-quality Wi-Fi. In parallel, by 2020, in accordance with the objectives of the Digital Agenda, all Europeans, regardless of where they live, should have access to high-quality internet, with a minimum speed of 30 Mbps, and 50% of the population should have access to internet with a bandwidth exceeding 100 Mbps.
Cambium Networks' objective is to help Spanish municipalities benefit from these grants. To this end, over the past few months, it has developed various information initiatives, created a platform that simplifies the grant application process and the drafting of technical specifications, and is currently training and certifying municipal staff and their local providers in WiFi technology.
The first call received more than 13,000 applications and the winning municipalities must commit to keeping these points operational for a minimum of three years, guaranteeing their connection at the highest speed available, provided that this speed is always higher than 30 megabytes.
The WiFi4EU project will create a single, user-friendly network across Europe for citizens, allowing them to connect to it in any country where they find a WiFi4EU enabled zone, and enjoy its use with guaranteed quality and security using the same procedure and credentials as in their country of origin.
Catalonia, with 44 awards, and Andalusia, with 41, are the two autonomous communities with the most municipalities receiving contracts. They are followed by Castile and León with 30, Valencia with 17, Extremadura with 12, Aragon and La Rioja with 11, Navarre with 10, Asturias and the Basque Country with 9, Murcia with 7, Galicia, the Canary Islands, and Castile-La Mancha with 5, Madrid with 4, the Balearic Islands with 3, and Cantabria with 1.
