Broadband News

BT hits 3.5m Wi-Fi hotspots

Monday 6 February, 2012

By Kelvin Goodson

Telecoms giant also makes accessing hotspots easier for BlackBerry users with a new app.

There are now 3.5 million BT Wi-Fi hotspots across the UK and Ireland.

If you subscribe to BT Total Broadband you have free and unlimited access to what the telecoms giant describes as “one of the largest Wi-Fi networks in the world”.

There are now over 380,000 hotspots in London, 25,000 in Birmingham and Leeds, 20,000 in Manchester, Edinburgh and Sheffield and more than 11,000 in Liverpool, Brighton, Bristol and Cardiff.

These hotspots can be found in homes, independent businesses, city centres, Hilton, Thistle, Ramada Jarvis and Macdonald hotels’, Welcome Break and RoadChef Costa service stations, American Airlines and SkyTeam airport lounges, Network Rail stations and Starbucks coffee shops.

BT has launched a new BT FON app it says will make it easier for BT home broadband customers with a BlackBerry to login to its hotspots. FON is a global Wi-Fi network with over four million hotspots that BT broadband customers can access.

The BT FON app, which is already available for Apple and Android devices, has been produced by BT because smartphones and tablet computers are superseding laptops and PCs as “the Wi-Fi device of choice”.

John Petter, managing director of consumer at BT, said: “Millions of BT broadband customers are enjoying free access to the one of the biggest Wi-Fi networks in the world. Our free apps for the Apple, Android and now Blackberry devices make getting online even easier and have already proved a huge hit with over 900,000 downloads.”

BT rival Sky announced last week that it is on the verge of launching its own public Wi-Fi service. Sky Broadband Unlimited subscribers will be able to access Wi-Fi hotspots across the country for free, including those in restaurants and outlets including Caffe Nero, Pizza Express and Wagamama.