As always, it’s not like both aren’t possible. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of railway projects ongoing at the same time.
A government can take care of more than one issue at a time, luckily.
It may be a small benefit for you (I assume you are german based on your server), but not every european country or citizen has the same access to internet. This is a good initiative, but obviously not primarily intended for the richer citizens/countries of the union.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
I would say it’s a small benefit for anyone. It’s not like people will walk to the town square, or the park or the hospital to use some free EU Wifi.
The title is also very wrong I found out. It’s not being launched. It’s not even funded any more.
Wifi4EU ran from 2018 to 2020 with a funding of 120 million EUR. They paid up to 15 thousand EUR for equipment and installation per municipality, the local municipalities had to pay for the internet service and maintenance.
This is the result: wifi4eu.ec.europa.eu/#/list-accesspoints
Still looks like a pointless exercise to me.
rainwall@piefed.social 3 days ago
15k for several distinct hotspots in a city is pretty reasonable, depending on what equipment they are using. Enterprise quality IT gear is expensive.
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
My city runs it’s own wifi hotspots all over the city, and it is quite a nice feature, especially if your data plan isn’t very good.
zlatko@programming.dev 2 days ago
Your city can probably afford it, but some can’t, or won’t. Initiatives like this get the ball rolling.