Publicroam offers secure Wi-Fi at nearly seven hundred Dutch venues
SIDN Fund supports development from pioneer project to successful nationwide service
All around the Netherlands, people make use of open Wi-Fi networks on trains, at airports, in restaurants and at countless other places. However, public Wi-Fi networks are often unsecured and therefore potentially unsafe. As a user, you're vulnerable to hackers and other cybercriminals, who can intercept sensitive information without you even knowing. Some years ago, therefore, the education sector set up the eduroam secure Wi-Fi network. Dutch government organisations have a similar network called govroam. Inspired by those systems, Paul Francissen and Ted Dinklo decided back in 2018 to create publicroam, so that internet users could have access to secure Wi-Fi at public venues as well. Since then, publicroam has grown from being a pioneer project to a successful initiative that now covers nearly seven hundred sites around the Netherlands. Paul talks about the vital contribution to publicroam's development and rollout made by SIDN Fund, and about the project's huge potential in the Netherlands and beyond.
A secure, privacy-friendly Wi-Fi connection
"Internet users should be able to automatically connect to secure, privacy-friendly Wi-Fi at all public venues in the Netherlands," asserts Paul. "Realising that goal is our mission. As co-founders of the Privacy Coalition, we published a manifesto, which included the ambition that privacy should be the norm. In the virtual world, just as in the physical world. We also argued that all data processing should be transparent, and that no digital service should have an earnings model based on the mass collection and sharing of personal data. Publicroam is therefore an example of a privacy-friendly alternative to the existing public Wi-Fi networks. It's our contribution to building a better digital world."
'Is publicroam available here?'"For publicroam, we use a secure Wi-Fi connection based on the WPA2 Enterprise open standard. We also respect users' digital rights and don't sell or exploit anyone's personal data. If an organisation wants to enable publicroam at a venue, they take out a subscription. We manage users' accounts ourselves in a secure, central environment. The user goes through a one-off registration process, which can be done using our app, on the publicroam.nl website or by SMS message exchange. The app's available from Google Play or the App Store. When a user registers, we generate a username and a unique password for them. Once they're registered, they can connect to secure, free Wi-Fi at any participating venue."
Publicroam rollout and support from SIDN Fund
"More than thirty Dutch libraries with a combined total of two hundred-plus branches are now using publicroam. We've achieved that by partnering with SIDN Fund and the Dutch National Library (KB). The Fund's support enabled the KB to team up with Dialogic and carry out a survey to establish what Dutch libraries needed in terms of secure, welcoming Wi-Fi. One of the findings was that libraries are playing a more community-oriented role in the digital world. It was also apparent that users expected the digital services offered by libraries to be secure and convenient. The survey results led the KB to introduce the publicroam secure Wi-Fi solution to all Dutch public libraries. Many libraries then dropped their existing, unsecured Wi-Fi services and started using publicroam instead. SIDN Fund's financial support and access to the Fund's network were very important in terms of facilitating that rollout," says Paul. "In 2021, we received further support from the Fund after responding to a call linked to the theme of 'Technician Seeks Designer', organised by the Fund in partnership with the Eindhoven Cultural Foundation. SIDN Fund matched us with the Kickoff Lab design studio, who helped us streamline our registration process and build an accessible app, so that publicroam users can sign up more quickly and easily. As a result, the threshold to using publicroam is now even lower. With the app, it takes less than a minute to register and start using our Wi-Fi. Kickoff Lab played a big part in all that, helping us improve our registration process and develop our website and mobile app. It proved to be a very valuable partnership: everything went smoothly, and the results were good."
Mieke van Heesewijk, Programme Manager at SIDN Fund, explains why the Fund was pleased to back publicroam. "Publicroam has the potential to succeed by spreading organically. The specific aim of the funded project was to prepare and realise the system's rollout to public libraries, but publicroam has bigger ambitions. Publicroam offers secure Wi-Fi access in all kinds of public venues, including government buildings, sports centres and cultural institutions. We're very hopeful that the initiative will give many more people access to secure Wi-Fi."
More than a thousand Dutch venues
"At the moment, Ted and I are focused mainly on the continued refinement and development of publicroam. We're also working to make more people aware of our service and build relations with partners and stakeholders. We work with a number of account managers, who are helping us approach organisations, such as local governments, museums and healthcare providers. Our technical service partner is Prolocation."
"We've set ourselves the target of getting publicroam into a thousand venues around the Netherlands by 2023," adds Paul. "But we're actually hoping for more than that, so that we've got a stable provider base to build on. Once we're firmly established in the Netherlands, we can think about expanding into countries such as Belgium, Germany and Sweden. After all, it's not only Dutch organisations that want to make their customers and visitors feel welcome by offering secure Wi-Fi. So publicroam definitely has the potential to become an international service. In the period ahead, we'll be investing in the further rollout of publicroam to local government buildings, hospitals and health centres, cultural venues, and so on. Helping to make the internet safer as we go."
Want your visitors to have automatic access to secure Wi-Fi? Contact publicroam for more information with no strings attached, or read about the options at aanbieden.publicroam.nl.
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