Wireless Hotspot operator BT Openzone has announced that its national UK network of Wi-Fi Hotspots, which provides public wireless internet access to those within range, has continued to "rapidly expand" and now includes more than 3.5 Million access points (up from 2 Million at Q4-2010) in homes, independent businesses and city centres.

According to BT's breakdown of the figures, you can now find most of their Hotspots in South East England (London is already known to be one of the world's largest Hotspot markets) where more than 500,000 reside. By comparison North East England had the smallest proportion of 99,000.

BTOpenzone WiFi Hotspots - Partial UK Regional Breakdown
* South East - 500,000
* South West - 330,000
* Scotland - 320,000
* Yorkshire and the Humber - 205,000
* Wales - 170,000
* North East - 99,000

In reality the vast.. vast majority of BT's Hotspots actually come from customers of their fixed line BT Total Broadband ISP packages, many of whom freely share their home Wi-Fi out over the operators FON service with other members and BTOpenzone users. Sadly BT doesn't say how many professional (non-FON / non-Business Hubs) Hotspots they have, although in 2010 it stood at about 4,000.

UPDATE 6th February 2012

BTOpenzone today confirmed that their total has exceeded 3.5 Million hotspots. We have updated the article from "3 Million" to "3.5 Million" accordingly.