If Europe is on your travel itinerary this summer, you probably want to know which airports offer free Wi-Fi and whether the service is fast enough for you to handle all of life’s last minute details before jetting across the continent. We took a look at Speedtest data from March through May 2017 from twelve of Europe’s busiest airports to help you find out.
Fastest airport Wi-Fi
It’s a good thing many airports in Europe offer paid Wi-Fi options if you want better speeds, because speeds on the free Wi-Fi everywhere besides Moscow and Munich are slow.
Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport has the fastest free Wi-Fi in Europe, about equal to the mobile Wi-Fi country average in Russia of 27.96 Mbps, although you’ll need a Russian phone number to access the airport Wi-Fi.
Germany’s second busiest airport, Munich, comes in a close second. Both airports have even faster upload speeds than download, so you can spend your layover safely stowing those vacation pics in the cloud. Munich’s Wi-Fi is 36% slower than Germany’s average download speed over mobile Wi-Fi of 37.94 Mbps.
The rest of the airports offer speeds that are much slower than the average mobile Wi-Fi speeds in their respective countries: Spain (42.72 Mbps), the UK (41.98 Mbps), Italy (21.02 Mbps), and the Netherlands (57.07 Mbps).
For comparison, Hong Kong’s International Airport offers free Wi-Fi with an average speed of 8.93 Mbps while the three largest airports in mainland China offer service ranging from 2.40 to 3.72 Mbps. Those are the slowest airports in Asia, read about the fastest.
Oddly, we saw no Speedtest results in Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport or at either of Paris’ two airports on the published free airport Wi-FI SSIDs during the time we surveyed. At both Orly and Charles de Gaulle, though, we did see networks called “*WIFI-AIRPORT”. If those are indeed the free airport Wi-Fi networks, Charles de Gaulle would rank 7th in Europe at 2.33 Mbps and Orly would rank 8th at 2.32 Mbps.
You can help us get accurate speed data for those airports by taking a Speedtest using the airport’s free Wi-Fi.
Fastest airport cell
In cases where you can’t connect to Wi-Fi, you’ll be delighted to find that cellular service in these airports is much, much faster than the Wi-Fi.
Munich Airport has the fastest average download speed on cellular with Rome’s Fiumicino Airport and Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport ranking a very close second and third, respectively. And Istanbul has the fastest average upload speed on cell networks.
In many cases, cellular service at these airports is faster than average speeds in the country as a whole. The airports in Munich, Istanbul, and Moscow are all more than twice as fast as that in their respective countries of Germany (23.05 Mbps), Turkey (29.45 Mbps) and Russia (14.92 Mbps). Cell downloads at Rome’s Fiumincino Airport are 56% faster than Italy’s average of 32.52 Mbps over the same period.
The Spanish and British airports we surveyed offer download speeds that are loosely comparable to the averages in their respective countries: Spain’s average is 28.32 Mbps and the UK’s is 25.92 Mbps. Download speed at Paris’s two airports is harder to summarize with the speed at Charles de Gaulle 27% slower than the country average of 29.08 Mbps while Orly’s downloads coming in 54% slower than the country. And Amsterdam’s Schiphol download speed is only half as fast as that in the Netherlands overall (47.38 Mbps).
If you want to know more, read our full country reports on Germany, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
Wi-Fi or cell?
Given those painful Wi-Fi speeds, this is kind of a no-brainer, but we thought you might want to see just how slow the Wi-Fi is at various airports compared to the cellular service.
We omitted data about the Istanbul and Paris airports from these graphs because we can’t verify the Wi-Fi SSIDs, but you get the point: when in doubt in Europe, use cellular service rather than free airport Wi-Fi.
Regional trends
You might be surprised how similar and how different Wi-Fi and cellular service can be at two different airports in the same country or even the same city.
Heathrow vs. Gatwick
The free Wi-Fi at Heathrow and Gatwick is similarly bad but you’ll get faster downloads at Heathrow and slightly faster uploads at Gatwick.
Charles de Gaulle vs. Orly
Wi-Fi downloads at Charles de Gaulle and Orly on the *WIFI-AIRPORT are almost exactly as awfully slow as each other. But on cellular, Charles de Gaulle has significantly faster download and upload speeds.
Barcelona Airport vs. Madrid-Barajas
Barcelona Airport’s slow 5.72 Mbps download speed over Wi-Fi is more than twice as fast as the 2.11 Mbps at Madrid–Barajas Airport. When it comes to cellular, however, Madrid’s downloads are 28% faster and their uploads are 15% faster than those in Barcelona.
Frankfurt Airport vs. Munich Airport
Munich Airport’s Wi-Fi download speed is more than three times faster than Frankfurt’s and Munich’s upload speed is nearly two and a half times faster. Munich also shows an average download speed over cellular that is 67% faster than Frankfurt’s while Munich’s uploads are 59% faster.
If your experience of internet performance at European airports is different than what’s reported here, take a Speedtest on Android or iOS so we can see what you’re experiencing. We’ll be watching for big changes and reporting on them here.
Up next in our fastest airports in the world series, we’ll be looking at internet speeds at the busiest airports in Africa.
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