BT backs free Wi-Fi access

There was good news for business travelers and mobile workers this week as BT announced a new tie-up with Wi-Fi community Fon, which will give the telcoms giant's customers access to over 190,000 hotspots worldwide.

Fon's service works by individual users agreeing to share a 512kb portion of their home broadband connection. A separate secure channel is opened up on their Wi-Fi router which then enables any other member to share that connection.

Although the service is primarily targeted at consumers on the move, it could benefit corporate workers too, according to Chris Bruce, general manager for Openzone at BT Retail.

"Consumers are business travelers too and on different occasions they will have different requirements," he added. "It means there are more options and it will [hopefully] explode the WiFi market generally."

BT said it hopes the tie-up will help grow the existing community of 500,000 users, providing access to BT Openzone hotspots and the 12 Wireless Cities, and cement the firm's commitment to providing broadband access outside the home.

However the announcement got a cool reaction from industry experts. Mark Main of analyst Ovum said the service would initially appeal only to a small segment of users, because of the relatively low number of handheld Wi-Fi devices on the market.

"Wi-Fi performance from inside buildings to outside is poor at the best of times, so performance for applications like VoIP over Wi-Fi will be unpredictable and not as convenient as a conventional mobile phone to manage," he added.