Technology

It's mind-blowing how at the same time some EU government guys pushing stuff like DSA while other do something like this (which is nice, and a complete opposite, if it's not honeypot anyways).

That's cool. Here in the US, we're this close to banning vaccines. *sad trombone sound

oh dude, they promised to be privacy friendly! maybe I'm just too american to believe in promises.

Do you need that app to connect to a WiFi network?

Well I don't know if that's a good use of EU money. I'd rather see investments in large and difficult infrastructure, rail, software, datacenters, industrial sectors we're currently lacking, grid investments - stuff like that.

End user internet access is more like thousands of small decentralised projects. The coordination might make it easier to use compared to if everyone did their own free wifi project, but that's such a small benefit...

If this does what it says on the box its huge

I think this is mostly for non-EU tourists. You don't pay for roaming in EU anymore so you don't really need WiFi when traveling.

Honestly nowadays data plans are cheap on most mobile carriers and they're obligated to have them work accross EU, so you no longer really need Wi-Fi when traveling.

Also, I can see this being easily and constantly exploited via Wi-Fi attacks where hackers set up fake Hotspots with the same name as the closest legit one.

Free Wireless ISP, you say?

cheapskate romanian sounds

Damn, this is so cool.
We could have had this in the States too, but, well, you all know.

More Europeans than ever can watch the live-streamed genocide that we've been arming and encouraging!

Thanks to EU roaming rules...

Not quite. I've come across a few plans that don't offer EU roaming, and also those where there's far less data offered than the regulation requires, or found a loophole.

Let's go for the examples of no EU roaming data:
T-Mobile CZ Twist IoT CR - IoT card, but it offers up to 500GB of data paid once a year (78 EUR), only usable in Czech Republic.
T-Mobile CZ 100GB edition - regular SIM, but also CR-only
Vodafone CZ GIGA 100 + 50 GB - also a regular prepaid, but no roaming
Swan Mobile (4ka) Sloboda Data - 300GB in Slovakia, but 0.144 EUR per MB in EU.

For the last example, they're also the same example that breaches the regulation with other packages. When I did the calculations, they exactly checked out for other 3 MNOs, so I guess I did them right, but they didn't for Swan.
Further confirming this is the fact that they have already received at least 2 (as far as I could find) fines for breaching these RLAH regulations, that is 15,000 and 90,000 EUR, but I suppose that just ends up being cheaper for them, as it still isn't fixed.

Anyway, perhaps they did in fact fix this, with a loophole.
For example, take Sloboda Nekonecno+ for 25EUR/month with "unlimited" (300GB) data. 8.25GB of EU roaming does not look right there.
So what is going on?
On paper, it's split up into base and additional package. Base package is 20EUR, and only has 2GB of data. Additional package with unlimited data is 5EUR/month, and as you could guess, cannot be purchased separately.

So, for base package, you get full allowance, thus 2GB. Additional package is calculated separately, (4.06504065041 / 1.30) * 2 is 6.25. And thus 8.25GB instead of 31.27GB was born.