Cases & Voices

The international project is driven by HEAnet, Ireland's national research and education network, and aims to make eduroam available beyond university campuses, in as many places as possible.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the significant digital divides that still exist around the world and affect a significant portion of the population. Faced with this challenge, Ireland's national research and education network, HEAnet, set out to make eduroam, the global academic roaming service, available in as many places as possible to members of the research and education (R&E) community around the world. Thus, "eduroam Everywhere" was born.

eduroam is a Wi-Fi service that enables students, academics, researchers and staff at universities and research centers to securely access the Internet, at their own institution and while visiting other participating organizations. Having started in Europe, eduroam has rapidly expanded throughout the world, and is currently available in more than 100 countries.

"eduroam Everywhere" is a project managed by HEAnet with support from the Irish Department of Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, other government departments and organizations, and an advisory team. Its goal, as the name implies, is to enable eduroam "everywhere", beyond the walls of universities or research centers to other locations, which are easily accessible to users. To achieve this, the plan was to leverage existing public and commercial Wi-Fi infrastructure, through agreements with providers.

In 2020, Ireland had 20 eduroam access points in non-academic locations, but since the implementation of "eduroam Everywhere" began, HEAnet has enabled almost 500 new locations outside universities, in places such as public libraries, museums, airports, sports facilities and medical centers, among many others, registering more than 500,000 successful authentications from these new locations by 2022.

Through this initiative, the Irish academic network is helping to bridge the digital divide by providing connectivity to end users - especially students - who previously did not have access to broadband due to their geographical location or economic circumstances. When the project began, the team contacted the Higher Education Authority (HEA) and received data highlighting the areas with the highest number of vulnerable students.

Based on that information, the project focused on the areas defined as priority areas, achieving 66% of them having an eduroam location nearby. The huge success of "eduroam Everywhere" is the result of close collaboration between the HEAnet team, government departments, local authorities, transport providers, trade associations and other groupings to facilitate the expansion of eduroam hotspots across the country. This demonstrates that cooperation between diverse stakeholders is essential to address significant challenges for our society, such as bridging the digital divide.