142 more Romanian municipalities receive EU funding for public Wi-Fi hotspots

A total of 142 municipalities in Romania are among the 1,780 European Union cities that will receive EUR 15,000 vouchers each, under the third call of the WiFi4EU program, local Agerpres reported.

The program finances the installation of Wi-Fi hotspots in public spaces (parks, public markets, libraries, public buildings) that will make available free and public wireless Internet, informs a press release of the European Commission.

By the closure of the application period, on September 20, the Commission had received over 11,000 applications from all participating countries out of the 25,000 registered municipalities. In the first two seconds after the call was launched, 2,000 requests for participation were uploaded.

Just like in the previous rounds, the beneficiaries received the vouchers based on the principle of first come, first served. Unsuccessful municipalities in this call are eligible to apply again for the remaining call next year.

A total amount of EUR 26.7 million was available during the third call for providing Internet access. For this call, the maximum number of vouchers available for each participating country was 142 vouchers, 8% of the total budget. The European Commission informed that a number of seven states (Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Romania, Austria and Hungary) have received the maximum number of vouchers available for a single member country.

For comparison, in the previous two calls, municipalities received vouchers worth of EUR 42 million (2,800 winners), in the first call, and EUR 51 million (3,400 winners), in the second call.

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