Phone boxes across nine UK town and city centres are to be turned into wireless internet access points.

The WiFi networks are being built by wireless service firm The Cloud and BT, and will allow up to four million people to access the internet wirelessly.

Mark Brett, lead officer for information management for the Society of Information Technology Management's (SOCITM) Information Age Group (SIAG) says the move to establish large scale wireless networks would drive down access costs.

'At the moment, a lot of the wireless access points are fairly expensive and are in places like coffee bars, hotel foyers and train stations. This type of initiative being spread around outside of these areas will drive costs down and make WiFi more accessible and more useful to people,' he said.

The nine towns and cities getting WiFi zones are Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool and the London boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Camden and Islington, with installations planned for other places later in 2006.

Brett says local businesses within the WiFi zones also stand to benefit.

'It will make people more mobile, and stop them from being tied to one place or location. You could have an office in the coverage of one of these points that could use it as a much more cost effective way of accessing the internet,' he said.