British Telecom announced that its Wi-Fi service is now available in more than 5 million hotspots across the UK and Ireland. The company has been adding over 20,000 new hotspots each week over the past year and is now offering unparalleled service to its Broadband customers who can access these hotspots for free while not at home. Users of other networks, on the other hand, have to pay a fee for access.
UK’s leading landline provider saw more than 400 million connections across its Wi-Fi network in 2012/13 with latest figures showing users’ online Wi-Fi time increasing. An incredible 13 petabytes of data (13 billion megabytes) were consumed across BT’s Wi-Fi network during 2012/13.
Research data from BT and ICM show varying Wi-Fi usage trends among different age groups. Most 18-24s favor Wi-Fi for social media, 35-44 year olds mostly shop online, 45-54s use it for GPS and mapping services, whilst the over 65s crowd rely on Wi-Fi for finding discount vouchers or codes.
Next year, BT plans to launch LTE service relying on its vast Wi-Fi network to provide users with fast Internet access even in places where there’s no 4G signal around.