A Thousand of New Hotspots in Moscow’s Wi-Fi Network

Moscow residents and visitors linked up to the city Wi-Fi network more than 130 million times in 2020. The most popular sites for connecting to the city network were at Manezhnaya, Pushkinskaya, Arbatskaya, Khitrovskaya and Tverskaya Zastava squares, in Vozdvizhenka, Maroseika, Okhotny Ryad streets and other places in central Moscow.

More than a thousand new hotspots appeared in Moscow in 2020: over 400 within the Garden Ring and the Third Ring Road, and others at the renovated Northern River Station, in the three dormitory buildings of the Russian Medical Academy of ongoing professional training as well as in community centres and other municipal agencies. The throughput capacity of communication channels was doubled in the dormitories of 23 universities, including the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, the Russian University of Transport, Pushkin State Russian Language Institute, Moscow State Technological University STANKIN and others. As a result, the speed of the wireless network has increased, which is especially relevant for distance learning.

“People linked up to the city Wi-Fi network this year almost eight million times more often than in 2019. This is largely attributed to a broadening of the area of the city with Wi-Fi availability and the appearance of new hotspots: over a thousand new Wi-Fi access points became available in the city’s public areas. The linkup peak was in the summer; and during the year people used about 15 million Gigabytes of traffic, which is comparable to downloading approximately 7.4 million movies,“ said Alexander Kharitonov, Head of the City Wi-Fi product of the Moscow Information Technology Department.

The shared Moscow Wi-Fi space appeared with the establishment of a single network operator. It makes it possible to switch from hotspot to hotspot without repeat authorisation while you move across the city. People in Moscow have used the city wireless internet over 250 million times since the system was launched.