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Bt Fiddles Figures To Reach 1 Million Hotspots
BT Openzone has extended its wireless broadband network to cover one million hotspots.
Openzone, which operates on a pay-as-you-go or a subscribtion basis, can be found in cafes, hotels and motorway service stations.
In the last six months the company claims to have doubled the number of wireless broadband hotspots it owns in the UK from 500,000 to 1 million.
That's a huge number of places to get online!
In fact if this growth continues then every other broadband provider might as well pack up and go home.
Rival wireless broadband provider The Cloud use O2's broadband network to keep 5,000 hotspots going, but how can BT Openzone jumped so far ahead of its rival?
What's a Hotspot Not?
When broken down the BT figures begin to make a little more sense.
The main driving force behind the growth in Openzone hotspots has been the service whereby users of fixed-line BT services can share their broadband and broadcast an Openzone wireless hotspot alongside their home wireless broadband network.
Wireless Hotspots such as these make up around 996,000 of Openzone's 1 million hotspots.
Which leaves around 3,800 hotspots which are situated in useful places like cafes, bars and hotels, places where you would expect to traditionally find an Openzone hotspot.
So has BT fiddled its figures?
Well, technically no, but some broadband analysts are claiming that including in the figures wireless hotspots broadcast by BT Home and Business Hubs is a little cheeky, especially as one user claims that this option is switched on by default.
This makes hotspots a boost only for consumer who take BT broadband deals.
Traffic growth
BT claims that it is expecting a billion minutes of use to have been clocked up across its Openzone wireless broadband service during the last year, saying that the growth of the iPhone has boosted demand.
iPhone users get free access to wireless broadband via BT Openzone and The Cloud included in their contracts, but many iPhone users say they can only connect to the original Openzone hotspots, not the Home Hubs.
Some claim that their iPhone's routinely have attempted connections refused or are even greeted with messages asking them to pay extra to access online services.
This means that instead of a million to choose from, iPhone users may only have access to 3,800.
This will clearly be a major factor when iphone users come to compare broadband deals
Mobile Broadband Challenge
There is no doubting that a million strong wireless network potentially provides a great service but BT Openzone will need to keep ensure that its customers take advantage before fast improving mobile broadband networks take a chunk of its wireless business.
About the Author
Neil Hawkins is a staff writer for the broadband news, reviews and comparison website Chooseisp where users can find UK broadband deals. The website also contains a number of tools for user to compare mobile broadband deals
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