Yahoo Finance Revealed: The best city in the world for free WiFi
What’s one of the first things when you land in a new city and hop off the plane?
Take your phone of Airplane mode and start the hunt for airport WiFi.
But not all cities are made equal: some places are better than others at keeping you connected, not just at airports, but across the whole city.
And if coughing up for SIM cards or international roaming isn’t something you want to do, you may well want to readjust your travel plans to holiday somewhere where you can get online for free.
New research from Travelsim assessed the top 20 most visited cities by international tourists for their free wifi availability across the city as well as at airports, hotels and B&Bs, and also factored in the cost of data and internet speed.
Paris, the City of Love and Lights, came out on top as the world’s most connected city, and is the leading city with 3,547 free WiFi hotspots every 2 kilometres.
Perhaps surprisingly, Thailand’s Pattaya came in second place, performing strongly due to the volume of hotels or b&bs with free WiFi in the city.
Barcelona and New York were third and fourth place, followed by Singapore – who made it into the top five due to the lightning speed of their internet at an average of 81 mbps.
London just missed out on the top 10, coming in at 11th place.
Of the 20 cities assessed, Dubai trailed in last place, with Turkish city Antalya at second-last place and Istanbul at third-last place.
However, while it might be convenient to hop straight onto the nearest available free hotspot, travellers should be wary about having their personal or banking details stolen by connecting to dodgy or unsecured public WiFi networks.
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Why isn’t Australia on the list?
We’re not going to be at the top of the list for anything internet-related any time soon: according to Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index, Australia ranks at a rather embarrassing 57th place when measured on average fixed broadband speed against other countries.
But in this instance, Australia doesn’t feature in the list because it is based on Mastercard’s 2018 Global Destination Cities Index, which doesn’t feature any Australian cities.
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