Hundreds of municipalities apply for WiFi subsidy from Brussels

More than 200 municipalities in Greece have secured funding of about 3 million euros from the European Union for the creation of wireless broadband internet infrastructure (WiFi).

The funding will come by way of the WiFi4EU initiative, and each municipality that enters the program will receive a subsidy of 15,000 euros to create one or more WiFi networks within its jurisdiction.

This EU initiative has been particularly successful, as over 10,000 local authorities from the 28 member-states plus Iceland and Norway have applied to receive the subsidy.

Almost all municipalities in Greece have submitted an application for inclusion in the program: According to the General Secretariat for Telecommunications and Post, following the first two invitations by the European Commission, 207 Greek municipalities entered the project – i.e. some 64 percent of the country’s local authorities.

So far the European Commission has set aside 93 million euros to cover the funds for 6,200 European municipalities that have entered the WiFi4EU program. The total budget of the project is expected to top 130 million euros. There is such great demand to be included in the initiative that Brussels has seen local authority applications rise to one per minute.