Spain is on the European podium in number of free Wi-Fi hotspots. This is what emerges from the recent report from the VPN review website, vpnMentor.
With a total of 93,225 free Wi-Fi access points, Spain is in the third place in the ranking, just behind Russia and Ukraine.
In terms of speed, the top 10 countries in the world with the highest Wi-fi speeds are all in Europe, with Lithuania and Croatia leading the way. Spain does not enter the list.
Fast and free Wi-Fi is available throughout Spain in a wide variety of establishments, with Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia forming part of the Top 3 of urban areas in the country for Wi-Fi access.
Among the unexpected results, the team found that while there is a lack of internet freedom in Russia, the country is not short of free Wi-Fi hotspots, with more than 275,000 public networks available. At the other extreme, Lithuania is one of the countries with the fewest internet access points in Europe, with just over 4,000, ranking it 24th out of 26 countries. However, it is the world’s number one in terms of public Wi-Fi speed, with an average download speed of 15 Mbps.
Number of hotspots
Not only does the number of hotspots matter, but also the probability of saturation of free networks. As of 2021, there are approximately 542 million Wi-Fi access points worldwide, and vpnMentor’s study shows that these are not evenly distributed. The vpnMentor research team has calculated how many people are at each Wi-fi access point – the lower the number, the better, and the more likely you are to get a stable connection.
In some countries, the limited number of hotspots means that access is not always available or that each connection may be saturated. Others have a great coverage of Wi-Fi access points throughout the country and a strong saturation compared to the population. Therefore, the countries were classified by:
- The number of Wi-Fi access points
- The average area of each access point
- The average number of people per access point
