BT and FON to Supply FREE UK Public WiFi for All From 22nd June 2016

Getting online between 22nd June and 22nd July 2016 could briefly become easier in the United Kingdom after FON confirmed that it had teamed up with BT to provide free public WiFi hotspot access, which is in honour of the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s (WBA) first World WiFi Day. But there’s a catch.

BT has been implementing related FON technology into their HomeHub routers for years, which allows other BT broadband subscribers to get online anywhere they can find one of the operator’s WiFi hotspots (either professional ones or those being distributed by residential customers); this is why BT can claim to operate several million free hotspots in the UK.

However the UK isn’t the only country where FON technology is used and it has also agreed a similar free WiFi access promotion for Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Romania and Australia; this is in partnership with related telecoms providers including COSMOTE, KPN, Proximus, Telekom Romania and Telstra.

Alex Puregger, Fon’s CEO, said:

“World WiFi Day is an important initiative for Fon because we are all about connecting communities and giving access to people via WiFi. We really believe in and support closing the digital divide. To celebrate, we are working together with our partners to open up access on as many networks as we can around the world. We are looking forward to it and hope people enjoy having free WiFi!”

At this point we should add that World WiFi Day is actually set for 20th June 2016, although ISPreview.co.uk understands that BT’s WiFi hotspots will only go free between 22nd June and 22nd July. On top of that the BT offer will only give you 1 hour of free usage and you’ll have to register to get a promo code first (here).