The People Most Likely to "Borrow" Their Neighbor's WiFi

According to data collected by Statista Consumer Insights, 16 percent of Dutch online respondents said that they mainly access their internet at home via their neighbor or landlord’s wireless connection. This is double the rate of people in neighboring Germany and France. According to the survey, only 41 percent of respondents in the Netherlands had access to broadband and 19 percent had a mobile connection via smartphone or tablet in 2025.

The United States and the United Kingdom had far lower rates of adults using their neighbors’ WiFi, at four percent and three percent, respectively. The U.S. also had a relatively low share of people with broadband, at 37 percent, while the UK’s was higher at 63 percent.

While the reasons for this discrepancy are not fully clear from the data alone, it’s interesting to note that breaking into an encrypted WiFi is not a criminal offense in the Netherlands, even though it is in other countries. Breaking into a computer, however, is.