BT Group hooks up with FON for widespread WiFi

It took quite a few months to make the call, but it seems the chatter between FON and BT Group has finally resulted in a deal. Announced today, Britain's top fixed-line carrier will be teaming up with FON to allow "more than three million UK broadband customers to use hundreds of thousands of hotspots for free." BT customers who agree to share a pinch of their broadband connection(s) will be eligible to surf away gratis on any of the "190,000" FON hotspots worldwide, and BT Group apparently hopes that this deal will eventually lead to "every street in Britain" being covered by WiFi.

[Adam @ Oct 4th 2007 4:10PM]

That's Great Britian to you ;)

[Chrisphillers @ Oct 4th 2007 4:11PM]

this is pretty big news, BT combined with the FON network will be a pretty substantial coverage - this hopefully will snowball. If only this was agreed last year as WiMax is on its way..also having said that if only this was 2 years ago pre 3.5G as I dont really need Wifi anymore. That is unless I get an ipod touch!

[shaun @ Oct 4th 2007 5:35PM]

There's a 3.5G?

[Phil Perman @ Oct 4th 2007 5:48PM]

HSDPA is 3.5G

[Sam @ Oct 4th 2007 6:20PM]

HSDPA is 3G. HSUPA is 3.5G

Edge is 2.5G

[Trentyn @ Oct 4th 2007 10:07PM]

I'm homieG from the westside!

[Sandwiches @ Oct 5th 2007 4:17AM]

@ Sam:
UMTS is 3G. HSDPA is "3.5G", HSUPA is "3.75G"!

[Sheps @ Oct 4th 2007 6:43PM]

Hmm, that's odd, it's not everyday I see the words "BT" and "free" in the same sentence...

[Andy @ Oct 5th 2007 4:21AM]

Substantial coverage is fine... but I used a bt openzone hotspot in a UK airport 2 weeks ago with my broadband login, all good. One week later I encounter a big exciting FON login page on which non of my details work except I have to register to get my free minutes, which I can't do without connecting to the net, which I can't do. AGH.

[paccoast2010 @ Oct 6th 2007 3:51AM]

Figures. LOL

[Elliot @ Oct 5th 2007 5:35AM]

this deal is essentially surrounding a new technology:

Every new BT homehub (their souped up ADSL router) in the UK, will act not only as a local wireless AP for the house, but will also host a second wifi connection which is open to anyone on the BT service. Therefore essentially all existing BT customers will turn into BT Openzone access points.

Pretty neat huh? Bar the fact that normal BT internet is overpriced crap and the coverage will never reach anything near every street in the UK. That said, in Manchester city centre you can generally see a couple of BT homehubs at any one time in many areas (except business districts of course)

[Jakob @ Oct 5th 2007 10:34AM]

When they launched FON in Denmark a year ago (I think) everyone got free 54G routers. What about UK?

[boriquajake @ Oct 5th 2007 10:43AM]

Why does nobody find this at all creepy? Are people going to just set up lawn chairs and card tables outside of your house in order to take advantage of your public hot spot? If the only way for those people to take advantage of your connection is to pay for their own connection at home, why are they setting up their card tables and laptops outside yours? Is this just so random people can make VoIP calls while walking past your house? What good is this in a residential neighborhood? Is this only for people that live in densely populated urban areas. Do I not understand this because I know nothing of day to day life in GB? Am I just another fat, ignorant, gun-toting, religious fanatic yank who completely misunderstands life outside of the narrow confines of my sad, meaningless life? Did I vote for Bush? Twice? To the last four questions, perhaps, yes, yes, and hell yes.

[Dan @ Oct 7th 2007 2:43PM]

Hey, fon also made an alliance of the same kind here in France. Neuf Telecom users are able to access for free any fon hotspot in the world but have in return to let others access their WiFi enabled ADSL modem.
That's pretty cool actually, as France has hotspots'o'plenty.