This was initially written as a reply, so I've expanded this post with more links. This blogpost is meant to point out wifi.ee as one of the places where it all began.
There's a very insightful thread on reddit about the history of the notion of "free Wi-Fi everywhere in Estonia".
As of 2019, free Wi-Fi in Estonia hasn't gone anywhere, and continues to thrive in many places.
But there were free Wi-Fi hotspots ten and even fifteen years ago, too, and even earlier (802.11b). Generally, the newer 802.11g Wi-Fi standard was first adopted in January 2003, which is almost exactly 16 years ago.
The earliest Internet Archive snapshot of wifi.ee, a website that began mapping public Wi-fi hotspots in Estonia, dates back to 7 march 2002. That's 17 years ago; there were only 7 public hotspots in all of Estonia on 14 March 2002.
Just look at this archived photo made in Tartu Lõunakeskus. That's seventeen years ago!
The Reddit thread is insightful, as several posts point out, that this kind of connectivity was almost unheard of elsewhere, and was like science fiction to people visiting the country.
The current 2019 map has 1225 free/public Wi-Fi networks.
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