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Number of BT Wi-Fi hotspots passes 3.5 million mark
Monday 06 February 2012 18:03:18 by Andrew Ferguson

There are now some 3.5 million Wi-Fi hotspots accessible by BT Total Broadband customers for free around the world. This is a mixture of BT hotspots and the Fon network, with some 380,000 locations in London, 25,000 in Birmingham and Leeds, around 20,000 in Manchester, Edinburgh and Sheffield, and more than 11,000 in Liverpool, Brighton, Bristol and Cardiff.

To help people access the hotspots three apps are available for the main types of smartphone, the Android and iPhone apps have been available for a while, now a BT Fon Blackberry app has been made available on Blackberry App World. The apps to date have clocked up some 900,000 downloads.

[ Topic: Mobile Broadband | 10 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by heduser about 1 year ago
Are BT wifi hotspots abroad really free? Are sister networks not looking for fees? Will try to check out.

Posted by EnglishRob about 1 year ago
@heduser How I understand it, if you're a BT Total Broadband customer and enable your router to be a hotspot then you can use other hotspots around the world on the FON network.

Back when I had BT Total Broadband a couple of years ago I did struggle to find a hotspot when I was on holiday on Cornwall but now it seems they're everywhere.

What I'd be interested to know is if a FON customer can use the BT wifi hotspots?

Rob

Posted by jumpmum about 1 year ago
Rob
According to the BT site yes, but I have never tried, have used FON and it works well for simple browsing/e-mail etc, not tried streaming video so I don't know if the bandwidth is enough for that.

Posted by zyborg47 about 1 year ago
The majority of BT broadband users have no idea that their BT Home hubs are set as default for Fon.

a pain in the neck all these unsecured connections as wireless devices try and use them first.

Posted by evanstim about 1 year ago
The service works for me. As we live in a rural village, I don't think anyone has ever connected to ours - not that I would actually know.

When travelling, especially in London, hotspots are usually easy to find. And, once the details are saved in the mobile device, connection is always quick.

Handy also is the ability to use the service at otherwise paid hotspots, e.g. foreign airports. I just enter my BT Broadband credentials and I am away with free internet.

Really, I don't have a problem with the service at all. Considering it is free...

Posted by michaels_perry about 1 year ago
The HomeHub acts as the 'hotspot' WiFi source and anyone who has one is letting BT claim that number of hotspots. But it seems many are just not aware that their broadband service is being used by BT so they can try to make this claim. However, any use of the HomeHub by others, those with a BT or Openreach contract in the main, are making use of YOUR broadband for their purposes for which you have no control at all! If they use it for nefarious purposes, that can be traced to YOUR account!!

Posted by Anairb about 1 year ago
My experience of this has been that it is a huge scam. You're piggy-backing on the service of a local user most of the time, and if there are several people doing the same you can't get online.

Posted by Anairb about 1 year ago
I live in London and have had problems getting online in Loughton, Chingford, Buckhurst Hill. I've just moved to Hackney and, ludicrously - as I'm now living one mile from the Olympic complex - there are NO BT Openzone hotspots where I live, or at Mile End where I have a daily coffee.

Posted by Anairb about 1 year ago
Even worse, I was on Infinity in the depths of Debden on the outskirts of Epping Forest and getting a very satisfactory 37-39mb download and an even better 8-9 mb upload. Here in Hackney Infinity is not available!
BT dumped me back on an ordinary broadband with 8mbs download, less than 1mb upload - AT THE SAME PRICE! Pardon the CAPS, but you can see why I'm not a happy bunny. Currently in negotiation with them. Don't expect a happy ending.

Posted by Anairb about 1 year ago
Pardon the three posts - the 600-character limit is tough.