UPC Netherlands announced the expansion of its Wi-Fi network based on customer routers, with the aim of reading around half a million hotspots in early 2014. The expansion will start in Zutphen, where it has been testing the service since July, and then move to the provinces of Flevoland and Friesland and other areas. The sharing function on customer routers will be activated remotely, with an opt-out available, and up to five users can share the public connection at once.
The initial roll-out of the hotspots covers the around 500,000 routers that can be updated by firmware. UPC has in total around 1 million broadband customers. Another 300,000 routers may be added to the Wi-Fi network, but it's not clear when yet. UPC provides Wi-Fi routers standard with all new contracts, but there remains a group of customers with older modems. Customers can exchange these for a router with the hotspot function.
The other major cable operator in the Netherlands, Ziggo, earlier started a similar project to share customer Wi-Fi routers and claims to have passed 1 million hotspots.
