Source: European Commission
The new opening date of the fourth and final call of the WiFi4EU initiative has been announced for 3 June 2020 at 13:00 CEST. With a call budget of EUR 14.2 million, the Commission will distribute 947 vouchers on a first come, first served basis to municipalities across Europe, allowing for geographical adjustments. The call will be open until 17:00 CEST on 4 June 2020.
The voucher will allow the winning municipalities to set up free Wi-Fi networks in public spaces. With a Community of about 30.000 registered European municipalities, WiFi4EU has revealed a strong and local demand for expanding the offer of Wi-Fi services to citizens in order to foster local e-commerce economy, support tourism, and increase the availability of local public services to the citizens. Seeing the interest in the initiative and to ensure that all available vouchers are allocated, for this call there will be no maximum number of vouchers per participating country.
The call, previously planned for March 2020, has been postponed to accommodate the rapidly-changing needs of municipalities during the COVID-19 crisis. In these challenging times, WiFi4EU is contributing to building connectivity resilience through support for the installation of free Wi-Fi access points in public spaces, including hospitals (18% of the installations) and schools (37.5%). The current emergency is reinforcing the importance of universal access to high speed, reliable and secure internet connections for all: businesses, public services, and citizens.
In order to be able to apply for the EUR 15,000 voucher, municipalities must be registered on the WIFi4EU Portal before the call. To know more about how the WiFi4EU initiative works, check out the WiFi4EU step by step guide and the FAQs.