BT is claiming the crown as the UK’s largest Wi-Fi provider today after it
has announced there are now over 2 million hotspots in its network across the
UK. These are available mainly through homes and businesses, but also at
high-street locations such as coffee shops and hotels, major city centres, and
the latest addition being a
trial at a London Underground Tube station. These different locations of
the Wi-Fi estate are made up of BT Openzone hotspots, BT FON Wi-Fi Community,
and BT Openzone hotspots available through BT Business hubs.
“Demand for wireless access is growing at a record rate, we’ve have added
more than 780,000 hotspots in the last six months and will continue to meet the
demand as more and more smart-phone, laptop, tablet, iPod and e-reader users
choose WiFi to stay connected when they are out and about. What’s more our BT
Total Broadband customers have free and unlimited access to the largest WiFi
network in the UK included in their broadband package.”Gavin Patterson, (Chief Executive Officer) BT Retail
Just 8 months ago, BT were touting their
one million strong hotspots, and the company has managed to double this
within this short period. The breakdown of figures between the different
hotspots is 3,900 Openzone hotspots (an increase of 100), 195,000 BT Business
Hubs offering BT Openzone, and 1,955,000 BT FON hotspots.
Test your broadband speed
Follow us on X for the latest broadband news 
“These are available mainly through homes and businesses” – and I wonder what proportion know they are providing them 🙂
They’re a darned nuisance when windoze decides to latch onto an unsecure FON channel rather than the correct secure one on a home hub.
“They’re a darned nuisance when windoze . . .” My solution is to not use “Redmond OS”. 🙂
@herdwick “They’re a darned nuisance when windoze …”
Depending on the o/s version, you should be able to set it to automatically connect to the correct SSID when this is detected, and to only connect to the others manually, which should overcome your problem.
I had the opportunity to try a couple of these a couple of weeks back. Neither would get any further than the initial screen, and even if they had done I wouldn’t have wanted to pay the outrageous prices (£3/hour, £5/day). I now have a PAYG 3G stick which I will use away from home where there is coverage (and at home when my DSL is bust). Where there’s no 3G for the stick, I’ll use my mobile (where I pay £5 a MONTH not a day).
BT OZ is indeed very useful, if you are a BT customer. I doubt the stats however, my old home location shows as a “BT FON” hotspot, I moved 4 years ago and I know the current owner does not use BT BB. I have also walked around town looking at a BT hotspot map – 50% didn’t exist. Try it yourself, would be interesting.
I see 30 access points here. 6 HomeHubs, 5 of which are advertising FON/Openzone access. Never managed to make the Openzone ones work though.