eduroam in Africa has been on an uptrend since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world. A recent poll has revealed the usage of the service has reached a global all time high of 6.4 billion. Our Community has made a significant contribution to this and deserves applauding. With member NRENs like the RENU , who have also recently launched their as eduroam on the GO devices, and high usage numbers in Kenya through KENET and in South Africa through TENET. A story by Karl Mayer details the full picture and global impact:
When COVID-19 lockdowns started in early 2020 it was inevitable that usage of eduroam would initially suffer as travelling became nearly impossible for most and heavily restricted for everyone.
At that time, 10 hour days of Video Conferencing became the norm and services like Zoom stopped being a cool thing only techies knew about to the way virtually everyone worked.
Even during these times, eduroam was still an essential for many students. With universities like the University of Delaware opening up eduroam access in college carparks to allow students without home WiFi to keep accessing student services and applications even when the doors to the college were closed. https://connect.geant.org/2020/04/16/timely-connections-university-of-delaware-partners-with-delaware-school-districts-to-provide-internet-access
Now as we are emerging into the post COVID world, eduroam is once again proving it’s value with almost 6,400,000,000 (that’s right 6.4 billion) national and international authentications registered in 2022 – that’s a 70% increase on 2021.
Now students, researchers and staff can access eduroam in a huge number of places around the world. From buses and libraries in Ireland (https://connect.geant.org/2022/12/16/heanet-announces-successful-rollout-of-eduroam-wi-fi-for-students-in-almost-500-new-locations-across-ireland) to metro trains in Edmonton, Canada (https://connect.geant.org/2022/06/30/city-of-edmonton-launches-city-wide-access-to-eduroam)
It’s clear that opening access to eduroam provides users with more educational opportunities and we are thrilled to be helping more people #love2eduroam.
This story was originally posted here: https://eduroam.org/eduroam-reaches-new-heights-a-new-record-of-6-4-billion-authentications-in-2022/