Newcastle City Council has transformed a fragmented collection of public Wi-Fi services into a unified network spanning civic buildings, libraries, cultural venues, public spaces and commercial locations, with OpenRoaming technology allowing users to connect automatically as they move around the city.
Newcastle City Council has developed a city-wide Wi-Fi network designed to provide residents, students, commuters and visitors with secure and seamless connectivity across hundreds of locations.
Working with Purple and using the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s OpenRoaming framework, the council has moved away from an environment in which public Wi-Fi was provided through multiple disconnected networks, each potentially requiring users to select a network, complete a captive portal or register before gaining access.
The project has created a more unified approach in which users can authenticate once and subsequently connect automatically to participating Wi-Fi networks as they move around Newcastle.
According to a case study published by the Wireless Broadband Alliance in partnership with Newcastle City Council, the deployment is intended to make Wi-Fi connectivity function more like cellular roaming, removing the need for repeated manual logins.
The network encompasses council and civic buildings, libraries, museums and galleries, community hubs, educational facilities, streets and public spaces and participating commercial venues.
This provides users with continuity as they move between different environments rather than requiring them to repeatedly identify and join individual Wi-Fi networks.
Newcastle’s approach addresses one of the challenges associated with the expansion of public Wi-Fi over time: individual networks can be deployed for particular buildings, services or locations without necessarily providing users with a consistent experience across the wider city.
For users, this can mean navigating different network names, captive portals and authentication processes.
OpenRoaming uses identity-based authentication to allow compatible devices to automatically identify and securely connect to participating networks. Once a user has an appropriate profile installed, the device can connect without requiring repeated manual intervention.
The approach is also designed to improve security by reducing the need for users to manually select public Wi-Fi networks.
Automatic authentication to recognised networks can help reduce exposure to rogue access points and other attacks that attempt to imitate legitimate public Wi-Fi services.
Purple operates as both an Access Network Provider and Identity Provider within the OpenRoaming ecosystem and uses cloud-based RADIUS infrastructure to support authentication.
The architecture is vendor agnostic, allowing the council and other participating organisations to use existing wireless infrastructure rather than requiring a single networking technology across every location.
The case study identifies support for wireless platforms including Cisco, Meraki, Aruba, Juniper Mist and UniFi.
This allows organisations with different existing Wi-Fi estates to participate in the wider OpenRoaming environment while retaining their underlying infrastructure.
Usage figures included in the case study indicate that OpenRoaming and Purple SecurePass have become the primary methods through which users access participating networks.
As of May 2026, the network had recorded 786,817 logins.
Of these, 535,744 were OpenRoaming or Purple SecurePass authentications, while 92% of network logins were completed using OpenRoaming or SecurePass.
The deployment had also achieved a 95% repeat visitor retention rate.
Among the locations recording particularly high levels of usage were Grainger Market, Blackett Street and New Bridge Street West, Neville Street and the Newgate and Clayton Street area.
The figures provide the council with evidence of how connectivity is being used across different parts of Newcastle and indicate the extent to which users are returning to the network after their initial connection.
The network also has implications for Newcastle’s sizeable student population.
The city is home to two major universities and between 45,000 and 50,000 students, including international students from more than 140 countries.
Students can potentially move between campuses, libraries, public spaces, transport locations and participating commercial venues while maintaining access to compatible Wi-Fi networks.
For international students and visitors, roaming-based connectivity can also reduce dependence on mobile data or the need to navigate unfamiliar public Wi-Fi registration processes.
The wider aim is to make connectivity available as users move through the city rather than treating Wi-Fi as an individual service associated with a particular building.
The OpenRoaming environment is also being extended into Newcastle’s transport infrastructure.
Purple is working with the Tyne and Wear Metro on an OpenRoaming pilot intended to enable users to move between the council’s network and Metro connectivity without having to reauthenticate.
If extended more widely, the approach could provide continuity between public spaces, civic facilities and transport environments, allowing compatible devices to automatically connect as users travel through the city.
This represents a further step towards treating public Wi-Fi as shared city infrastructure rather than a collection of independent hotspots.
Newcastle City Council’s deployment also forms part of efforts to address digital inclusion.
While mobile connectivity is widely available, access to reliable Internet services is not universal. Public connectivity can therefore provide an additional route online for residents who may have limited or unreliable Internet access at home.
Making Wi-Fi available through libraries, community hubs, public buildings and other locations can support access to online services, employment resources, education and other digital services.
The ability for devices to reconnect automatically is particularly relevant to this objective because it reduces the steps users must complete each time they need to access connectivity.
Rather than requiring individuals to repeatedly register with different networks, the OpenRoaming model enables participating locations to operate as parts of a wider connectivity environment.
For the council, the project demonstrates how existing Wi-Fi infrastructure across multiple organisations and locations can be brought together to provide a more consistent experience without requiring wholesale replacement of the underlying networks.
With hundreds of thousands of logins already recorded and OpenRoaming and SecurePass accounting for the majority of connections, Newcastle is now extending the model beyond fixed public locations and into transport.
The longer-term objective is to create a city environment in which residents and visitors can move between participating locations while their devices connect automatically to trusted Wi-Fi, making connectivity increasingly part of Newcastle’s underlying digital infrastructure.
