BT has substantially increased the size of it’s Wi-Fi hotspot network over
the last 6 months to over 1 million hotspots, up from 500,000. The increase is
largely due to BT home/business hubs having the hotspot functionality built in
and enabled. BT are expecting their users to rack up over 1 billion Wi-Fi
minutes between April 2009 and April 2010, something it lays largely at the
hands of the iPhone user.
“Whether at home, at work or when out and about, wireless access is central
to keeping people and communities better connected. We’ve grown from 500,000 to
one million hotspots within six months, and will continue to add more to meet
demand from smart-phone, laptop, iPod and now e-reader users.”Gavin Pattersion, (CEO) BT Retail
The number of specifically deployed Openzone hotspots lies at 3,800, with
137,000 being made up of BT Business Hubs, and 860,000 BT FON home hubs. BT FON
members also have access to another 225,000 FON hot spots in the UK and
worldwide, whilst Openzone customers can access 65,000 hotspots worldwide.
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I bet we get to 2 million and i still wont be able to get my iphone to connect to its first bt openzone.
So, how come O2 are still saying this about the iPhone: “With your current tariff, you get free access to over 7,500 Wi-Fi hotspots from The Cloud and BT Openzone. ”
http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/wifi.html
OK, so 1,000,000 > 7,500, but are they seriously underselling, or does the iPhone only get free access to a subset?
@ianeiloart
They don’t include FON spots as they aren’t owner dependent unlike the 7500 which are dedicated by the 2 providers.
“The number of specifically deployed Openzone hotspots lies at 3,800”
So the other 3,700 must be Cloud/free spots.
All BTOpenzone hotspots are not equal as far as O2 iPhone users are concerned.
While I can connect to those in service stations and pubs, any that are piggy backed on homehubs (typically indicated by a co-existing BTHomeHub and/or BTFon SSID) refuse to validate my phone number when connecting.
I concur with the previous posters. I’ve had iPhones on both O2 and Orange, and neither connected to Business or Consumer Home Hub “BTOpenzone” hotspots. BTFon SSIDs connect, but access is via subscription only costing up to £39 for a month’s access.
With Orange, I’ve found that 3G coverage is significantly better, so I have eschewed Wifi access at places where I would have used BTOpenzone hotspots in favour of 3G. It really is no slower at retrieving e-mail or looking at the odd webpage.
The only reason there are that many hotspots is that BT have enabled the Openzone facility on the routers by default and most owners do not realise this.
Savvy customers who disable the Openzone on their router, suffer reduced functionality.
BT are not providing extra bandwidth for their Openzone customers using these hotspots, they are taking up to 512Kbps bandwidth off their broadband customers and not paying for it.
However there is a trade off. They can use any Open Zone or fon hotspot without any further payment. I went with BT Fon from it’s inception and jolly useful it is too.
I must not be “savvy enough” as I can’t see any obvious area within my router settings to disable Openzone use.
How would I do this if I wished?
And what functionality would I lose if I did?
I’m an openzone site too. Just wish I could get my pda to talk to my hub!
Openzone is disabled at http://192.168.1.254/xslt?PAGE=BT_OPENZONE
Then the router fails to list connected devices until you re-enable Openzone.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BT-Openzone-WiFi-30-Day-Access-Vouchers-/330436678685?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_Tickets_Trave_Vouchers_Coupons_LE&hash=item4cef8f941d
i came across this, bought it considerably cheaper and recieved a fully working code within four/five hours, check it out 🙂