By Tony Hallett, 23 October 2003 15:08
NEWS BT has taken the logical step of combining broadband, wireless home networking and public Wi-Fi access via its BT Openzone operations.
The package will be called BT Broadband Traveller and, as a simple addition to existing bills, will be aimed at consumers, home workers and SMEs.
With strong sales of 802.11b-enabled client devices - mainly laptops and some PDAs - as well as the proliferation of public hotspots, a combination package has been on the cards.
BT's public hotspot roll out goal is 4,000 locations by June next year and roaming deals with various operators and locations means potential access points - offering truly broadband speeds - could be much higher.
A BT spokesman said the service is aimed "at anyone who needs total access at home and also when out and about".
Wireless access when away from one's main broadband connection will be limited but pricing resembles that ubiquitous cellular networks.
The pricing breaks down as £27 per month for a broadband ADSL connection from BT, £129.99 or more to set up home wireless networking, then 23.5p per minute for time spent using a BT Openzone hotspot.
Unlike with some tariff structures for data over mobile phones, the decision was made not to charge on the basis of traffic volume.
Yesterday BT cut the cost of using its Openzone network and for heavy public users a separate Openzone account is likely to work out cheaper than Traveller's pay-as-you-go. To give users an extra incentive, the first three months of the subscription are free.
Comments
There are 9 comments. Join the discussion
1. Andrew Le May
The great BT WIFI rip off
23.5p a minute for using an 802.11b WIFI connection which costs £27 a month (retail) to operate! This is ridiculous.
As you're not getting the benefit of the home link when you’re out and about, but are still paying for the service, why should you pay through the nose for what you have already bought, 'broadband access to the web'. This extra service should attract something like a £5 monthly charge and be added to your home ADSL bill.
BT, get rid of this expensive-to-operate & complicated billing mechanism, stop trying to rip us off and get real. No one will pay this and you will be usurped by another organisation or group of users creating a free network as this technology costs literally nothing to operate.
2. Robin Back
23.5 per minute for access... they must be joking! the practical problems of unhooking a wifi card from PDA or laptop whilst in the middle of womething else are well-known. Also, if this is part of a package already including 24/7 home access, why should roaming be anything other than a supplementary.
I do hope the bright spark in BT who dreamed this one up will be infromed of the error of his ways! His perception of the real world defies description.
3. Patrick Bossert
Well done BT! I think it's an excellent offering - it only takes a couple of minutes to get synchronised in a hotspot - and I'd happily pay £1 or £2 for the convenience. It's far better than having to buy a £6 voucher or commit to a monthly subscription. I think BT is beginning to listen to what its customers really want. The only thing is I can't find any mention of it on the BT website.
4. Charles Turton
Another "build it and they wil come" BT offering...
5. Nick Brown
Why spoil a great idea with that 'price per minute' nonsense.
6. Rob Whitehouse
This is an excellent idea and the room for expansion is immense. Well done BT, but please re-think the billing. An extra charge on the monthly broadband connection charge would be the most simple and more acceptable to customers. It would also reduce the amount payable to mobile operators for over the 5Mb remote data downloads.
7. Anthony Smith
A great idea ruined by a greedy, prohibitive charge - over £14 an hour, the guys at BT are off their rockers.
8. Dean Bubley
Fits in with BT's usual pricing "yield management" approach - offer something convenient but at high enough price that it doesn't overwhelm the system, and gets used sparingly (but profitably)
So, it's ideal for quick email checks/downloads but not for sitting in a cafe for an hour listening to streaming MP3s.
BT knows that if you're a casual user & want to use the web, an Internet cafe costs about £2/hr. Presumably it doesn't want to compete with Stelios & commoditise WiFi too quickly. Also I suspect that BT is also limited on pricing a bit by its roaming agreement with The Cloud.
Ironically, sitting in my local cafe I can see an Openzone hotspot, T-Mobile hotspot & a "free" one. Guess which I use.....
9. Chris Moller
How about BT encouraging all of us to provide WiFi hotspots, by paying us a percentage of the 23.5p they charge the public? If my house or office is by a busy location (car park, High Street etc), it might make the net cost to me quite reasonable, as well as providing a valuable public service. (OK, there are reliability and security issues, but these could be solved, if there was a will.) This way, there could be thousands of hotspots in no time.