The free-WiFi-hotspots-for-clients movement by telecom companies gets another addition in Romania: cable and internet company UPC. The company recently launched its UPC Wi-Free service, which gives its clients free and unlimited web access outside their homes, via UPC's hotspots, both in Romania and abroad. UPC says its new service has hundreds of  thousands of hotspots across Romania. The company has activated extra modems across Romania, with an additional provisioned band, which does not affect the clients' existing services.

To access the network, the client has to sign up on MyUPC platform and receive free and secure access to the hotspot network. "A registered user who wishes to give up on the service will deactivate the Wi-Free network on the modem it has in custody, but it will also loose access to this Wi-Free network," UPC Romania explained.

UPC joins other players that have done similar locally. Romanian telecom company RCS & RDS started its hotspot network across Romania in 2011, and how has over 2,400 such hotspots, available for free for its internet clients, who receive a user and password to connect.

Earlier this year, telecom operator Telekom – back then called Romtelecom, later re-branded – launched the Fon network in Romania. This is a global WiFi sharing network that allows free access to any of its 13 million access points from around the world, provided the user shares the access to their own WiFi connection from home, which is only possible on certain routers which can create a different channel for the shared internet connection.

Telecom player Orange, currently the largest mobile operator in Romania by number of subscribers, also runs a hotspot network in Romania, which had about 400 access points in August this year. By year-end, it wanted to reach 1,000 access points in the country.

About half of adult Internet users use WiFi connections outside their homes, according to UPC, and only 29% of them use mobile Internet, while less than a quarter use Internet dongles.

Corina Chirileasa, corina@romania-insider.com