New EU rules decree free, public 100Mbps Wi-Fi in every town in Europe

According to the president of the EU’s executive body, Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU is in trouble. Between the refugees and the terrorists and the finances, Juncker says, the EU is facing an “existential crisis,” and what Europe really needs right now is… more internet.

Hold up. More internet?

All the cool children are on the web, Juncker suggests, and web access enables individuals. While he's likewise for logging all outskirt intersections and giving that data straight to Europol, he needs to for all time kill meandering charges and spread out web availability through free open Wi-Fi, with the goal that it comes to wherever individuals invest their energy. He needs to do this by 2020. Keeping that in mind, he has a €120M award laid out for districts to use for web framework, and the arrangement is to begin composing checks before the current year's over.

The goal was announced in Juncker’s annual State of the EU address. Everyone should be able to benefit from being connected to the internet, he argues, no matter where they live or how much money they have. But it’s not quite as easy as the handwaving suggests.

We propose today," said Juncker, "to prepare each European town and each city with free remote web access around the primary focuses of open life by 2020." A factsheet for his Wifi4EU arrangement says that it applies to parks, squares, libraries and open structures. Here's the quick and painless:

• minimum download speed of 100Mbps for all European households
• minimum download and upload speeds of 1GBps for all hospitals, administrations and other public services reliant on digital technologies
• uninterrupted 5G access for all major roads and railways

Yet, Juncker's arrangement additionally makes it clear that the commission expects to spend a most extreme of €120M to introduce the important gear — apparently, the principal €120M, where after the districts will need to horse up for the rest.Municipalities will also probably have to shoulder maintenance costs and all the other ancillary expenses. When you think about the fact that there are 27 member states in the EU, if it’s doled out equally, each country will only get about €4M, and that great big grant starts to sound more like a chore. And that’s ignoring all the security problems and honeypotting that will immediately swamp the system. Woe betide the Wifi4EU network staff.

Juncker went on to talk a big game about copyright protections for content that would be served on that omnipresent public internet connection. “Artists and creators are our crown jewels,” he said, continuing with comments that artists, authors and other content creators should be paid fairly for their work. How does he intend to ensure this? Again Juncker breezed right on past the how. But what he’s alluding to is a controversial new set of copyright laws that involve gems like the “Google tax,” which would allow publishers to charge aggregators for publishing snippets of their article content, and the “YouTube rule,” which requires content hosts to screen for copyright infringement. The latter seems like a direct kick in the shins to the safe harbor principle of the DMCA. Europe needs more internet, evidently, but it better be the right internet.

Sources: extremetech.com - sharingmode.com