Curated Spot Check: Bucharest, Romania

Posted on January 26, 2014

A recent trip to Europe saw us in Bucharest for a Curated Spot Check. If you’ve seen earlier posts, you’ll know this is our way of doing an on-the-ground Wi-Fi assessment of our crowd-sourced curated Wi-Fi service. It involves field measurements, primary research, and data analysis of the Wi-Fi environment, so we can fine tune our local algorithms and better assist our operator customers in delivering the “always best connected” user experience. The bottom line in Bucharest? It’s a city surprisingly rich with amenity Wi-Fi—that’s the Wi-Fi that’s shared by venue owners and provided for customers and the public. In fact, it is easier to find and get on to Wi-Fi in Bucharest than most other European cities. Here are the highlights: Bucharest locals are high-frequency mobile data users: 30% of the population has a smartphone, a larger number than much of Eastern Europe. 80% of those device owners are heavy Internet users. Many young Romanians consider themselves to be tech-savvy, and there is a thriving resource of engineers and programmers. Bucharest venue/shop owners recognize the importance of smartphone use by their customers and make it as easy as possible to get on and get connected. Bucharest venue/shop owners are…