BTOpenzone and Fon UK WiFi Hotspot Services Renamed to BT Wi-fi

BT has, without much fanfare, rebranded its public wireless (wifi) hotspot business from BTOpenzone to the more understandable title of BT Wi-fi. The move will also bring its BTFon service together under the same name.

The vast majority of BT’s over 4 million wifi hotspots actually come from customers of their fixed line Total Broadband ISP packages, many of whom freely share their home WiFi out over the operators FON service with other customers and BTOpenzone users.

BTWi-fi CEO, Andy Baker, said:

“As tablets and smartphones have become increasingly popular, connecting to the internet through wi-fi has become more relevant. We are proud to offer our customers free access to one of the biggest wi-fi networks in the world and wanted to make it easier for our customers to find a hotspot and get online, it made sense for us to bring our estate under one unified brand.”

BT claims that 21,000 people log on to BT Wi-fi every minute during peak times and more than 1 billion wifi minutes were used over the last three months on its service. Its international coverage also expands to a total of 6 million hotspots in over 100 countries.