I once lived in the area where one of the Freifunk core contributors lives (Mannheim / Heidelberg / Karlsruhe / Rhein-Neckar Region). For years we also talked to the municipalities and the mayors of towns around the area, especially the smaller ones that had troubles getting their internet connections and bandwidths beyond 768kBit/s because they were ignored by ISPs and are kind of the best case for mesh networks.

But, as the saying goes, with the incompetent conservatives (CDU) there's no limit on how they waste tax money. If there is a friend of them doing something for more expensive, it's getting bought; because cheaper means always worse, right? Right?

For example, in a small town with around 20k citizens, they spend more than 50k EUR per year for two Wi-Fi spots near the local library, and those are "maintained" by an energy company. They also had to buy those access points for an initial sum of 20k EUR per access point, because they were very special and integrated in the street lights (not kidding you).

Network speeds are less than 10Mbit/s. For that amount of money per year, you could've easily gotten a fibre connection to the library building (which also has less than 10Mbit/s internet connection, so they are kinda fucked once more than 5 people use the internet there).

The moral of the story is somewhat that it's so ridiculous how incompetent politicians are when it comes to tech.

I'm kind of glad that this is an EU-driven project that's delegated top-down, because that means those incompetent politicians have no excuse to buy overly expensive tech stuff from their golf buddies anymore.

> The moral of the story is somewhat that it's so ridiculous how incompetent politicians are when it comes to tech.

"Incompetent"...

Everything within Europe and especially within EU runs on corruption. You're either a parasite or a host if you live in Europe. Reap that juicy corruption money by befriending people with influence or pay the salaries and luxurious lifestyles of the people who do with your taxes.

The EU just throws too much money around without checking.

I've seen whole parks being built with a huge sign saying funded by the EU but they never opened or even built an entrance to it. Because that would mean maintenance and the subsidy had already been cashed.

I don't think it's corruption per se on the part of the EU (it is on the builders' part of course). But rather a lack of interest in how the money is spent.

That is difficult to disagree with when I see this:

> The suburb of Budapest has built a luxurious kindergarten that suspiciously looks like a private residence - with €550K of EU money. It doesn't accept any children.

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1ejr4a8/the_suburb_...

When they throw hundreds of thousands of Euros around, without having the competence for spending a fraction of that for checking that it is used as intended, then they shouldn't have that ability.

I saw an asphalted road on the mountain ridge, along the E-3 hiking route, in a national reserve territory, with a EU funding sign saying that it was built for the benefit of the local species.

The road leads to a chalet, and the only one who it benefits is the chalet's owner, it makes it easier for his drunkard customers to drive right to it with zero walking involved.

Such projects are EU funded but in fact implemented through national or regional programmes agreed by the regional authorities... So it's usually at that level that favouritism or corruption plays in.

The point is that the EU funders of course know this and turn a blind eye in order to keep the people in power in the regions supporting the EU. It's just how it has always been in Europe with vassals. Feudalism has always been the government of the old world, and will always be, and the people will always love it. Now get back to work so you can afford your rent or your mortgage. Funny how most all the ancestors of Europeans worked their whole life to pay the mortgage, yet it's still not paid!

Though Wifi4EU's website doesn't seem to have any clear indication on expected speeds of the networks they offer? Further, their selection criteria includes things like the historic value of the municipality rather than actual unmet demand or something connected to user desires.

Incompetence or corruption?

Yes?

They can, but don’t have to, go hand in hand.

One relies on evidence and chain of custody, the other does not.

Some russian and chinese volunteers, just what we need

imho "free wifi" is not to be trusted in any case

Yet users will use whatever is available. E.g. people routinely send SMS with sensitive data, even though SMS is probably the least trustworthy channel.

They can only help that by securing the equipment and networks. Telling public "don't trust these because foreign hackers" is not going to do much.

If you pay for icloud, there’s a button in iOS that tunnels everything over a tor-wannabe vpn.

There’s no real reason to trust wifi access points at this point, or demand they be trustworthy.

iCloud tunnel is so slow it’s unusable. And ISP can turn it off at will without your knowledge.

What are you talking about? It’s not slow at all.

Correlating sizes of data sent/received and precision timestamps is already huge intelligence. And the more entry/exit points you can tap on -- the better it becomes.

I think the EU initiative is better.

Volunteer-run infrastructure is fine, but you cannot rely on it. Can you really blame a volunteer if things break? No. They will hopefully fix it on they own time and dime, and that's good.

Volunteer-managed infrastructure is a courtesy. The fact that it's been reliable so far is no indicator of future reliability.

EU-driven initiative on the other hand supplies funds (15'000 euros, for proper hardware, maintenance and replacement parts) and uniformity: users in spain will have to go through the same procedures and configurations whether they are in italy, spain, germany, france or any other eu member state (does freifunk does the same?)

I don't think it would've been very difficult to include volunteer networks in the database and allow users the option to fall back on them if an EU-funded network is not available (including a warning about potential eavesdropping on unencrypted communications).

Can you blame anyone if "official" free WiFi breaks? I doubt it.

Yes? You can blame the government that is funding it with taxes. Thats a much clearer chain of blame and expectation of service.

I think they're only paying for install costs and not ongoing fees.

There have been projects like this in the past. At least in some parts of Europe, they worked just for the minimum mandated period at the minimum mandated speeds. And the equipment bought was marked up heavily.

And looking at the prices for enterprise grade WiFi these days... 15K EUR goes very little.

For this purpose unifi or similar is more than adequate, each hotspot is presumably just one or two APs.

I can't disclose many details, but at the company I work at they did some Wifi4EU installs, and use Ubiquiti hardware, without noticeable reliability issues. Installs do have more APs usually, like for public buildings, libraries... But usually no more than ten. Can be handled with one UniFi Controller and a few APs, so no worries.

> users in spain will have to go through the same procedures and configurations whether they are in italy, spain, germany, france or any other eu member state

"The same procedures", really?

Can you use a wifi hotspot anonymously in Italy? I mean completely without the need to authenticate or provide a mobile number to receive one-time SMS code...

I know for certain you can in Germany. Join the hotspot, tick a box to accept the T&Cs, off you go....

You should if the network is supposed to be anonymous. Though Spanish law, for example, AFAIK requires you to identify customers if you're acting as an ISP (which you are when you offer internet services) or you could be liable for illicit activity. Wonder how this works, since I assume the liability would fall under the public entity who provides the service, not the company installing it.