The city of Brussels is slowly rolling out free citywide Wi-Fi service (in a testing phase) with the help of outdoor advertising firms, JC Decaux and Clearchannel. The city is installing Wi-Fi access points on electronic billboards. The service is free of charge but will be limited in bandwidth as the city has no plan [...]

Berlin, Germany has very ambitious plans to provide free Wi-Fi access throughout the city, starting with a pilot project around the city’s main streets, Unter den Linden, Friedrichstrasse, Kurfürstendamm and Tauentzienstrasse. If the city is pleased with the results (and Deutsche Telekom doesn’t get in the way, which is what all the European telecom incumbents [...]

The canton of Fribourg, Switzerland is providing free Wi-Fi service to visitors in government offices, schools and hospitals in its capital, Fribourg. The canton will roll out free Wi-Fi to the other 168 municipalities in its jurisdiction in the coming months. I am not surprised to see more local governments and enterprises offering free “guest” [...]

Ascó, a town of 1600 people in the region of Catalonia, has rolled out a wireless mesh network covering 74 square kilometers. The town is best known for its nuclear power plant, as well as almond and olive groves, and vineyards. According to the service provider, Eurona, the city will use the network for municipal [...]

Varadzin, Croatia is deploying a citywide wireless broadband network for government and public use. According to service provider, Magik Telekom, 45 Motorola mesh nodes have already been installed, covering an area of one square kilometer. The city is testing a number of applications on the network: monitoring traffic, controlling street lighting and parking using video [...]