The number of Wi-Fi hotspots in the UK that BT operates is set to double to 1 million in the next 6 months despite it taking 7 years for BT to reach 500,000 hotspots.
With the demand for Internet available wherever we are due to more and more laptops and primarily smart phones such as the iPhone and Blackberrys. BT is looking to tap into this demand as social networking has meant that people are Facebooking and Twittering all day long to communicate with friends.
Dave Hughes who is BT’s Retail director told the Times newspaper
The real revolution is the handheld device. People are perfectly happy to get these devices out of their pockets in the street to update their social networking sites or check their emails, which isn’t the case with laptop
BT will look to add the extra Wi-Fi hotspots via it’s BT Openzone network, they already have Wi-Fi hotspots installed into Starbucks and Caffe Nero along with hotels such as the Hilton, Ramada Jarvis and Thistle hotels.
BT Broadband customers can access the hotspots for free and those who are not are still able to access the network at a cost of 0.5p per minute.